Tomato Protection

Made a protective cover for my tomato plants. I actually do have a greenhouse but these plants are in the ground and well established. Tonight is supposed to get into the mid to low 20's, no way they would survive without this.

What I did was get a medium thick sheet and put in stakes to support it over the plants. Sure some of the plants are hitting some of the sheet but for the most part they are pretty safe. The stems are hardier than the leaves anyway and with the warmth of the light in there they should be enough, with the small area, to keep warm overnight. I weighed the sides down with large concrete blocks.  Most of them took both hands to pick up and place carefully. There is also a parsley plant in there with them.

It;s supposed to freeze again Sunday through Tuesday next week so I will probably leave the sheet on until Wednesday and turn the light off during the day as long as it isn't supposed to be too cold during the day.

I used some of our parsley last week in my gumbo. Loved it!  Still have a few bowls left over in the freezer, one of the few really good freezer foods. Another of which is the muffins we made, fennel, fig, and chocolate. We made a lot of them about two years ago and I popped one out yesterday to thaw for a couple hours.  Almost just like we had made them that day.

Wouldn't You Like To Have A Pepper Too?

My pepper experiment this year has been an overwhelming success. I threw a bunch of pepper seeds out on a very fertile raised area of the yard and *POOF* up come pepper plants. With a little watering they survived the summer and now in the cool part of the year they are producing a hefty crop of peppers.

The first frost has been pushed back a little longer so they should get nice and big. I've already picked a few and used them in pastas, sandwiches and a gumbo. I have to admit that they aren't as big as the ones in the stores but they taste way better.

Here is a view with several different peppers in the picture. Unfortunately I don't know what some of the peppers are since I sprinlked some mixed pepper seeds in with all of it just in case they were still good. No sense in wasting seeds. It's made a very interesting grouping of peppers. They are all different sizes and hopefully soon more colors will come to the fore.

I just better not forget to pick them or my wife will probably shake her head at me and sympathetically pat me on the back to comfort me in my time of mourning.

Gumbo

This either describes the soil I have to contend with or what I'm having for supper today. Amber, my wife, is sick and needs some comfort food. It's also spicy and will open up her sinuses.

I bought something at the store called small bulb green onions. I did no research on them but decided they would do just as good as regular green onions in the gumbo I was about to make.

So far it's an emphatic YES! Tastes pretty good and there's the extra added onionness, if that's a word, to the taste.

I fully intend to plant some of them in the yard for even more green onion plants. They seem to stay pretty well especially in the coming winter. I didn' t have to buy them but just couldn't help myself...

Side note. I've added my wife's Etsy page to the list of links on the right side of my blog under her sites/blogs section. Let me know what you think.