Some Eggplants, Cats and Bolting Lettuce

I think I will have too many eggplants soon. Here I am holding a spent ichiban bloom next to a orange Turkish eggplant. You can see that the Turk is much smaller. The Turkish eggplant will become about the size of an egg, though it looks as though it may produce bunches of eggplants like grapes. I am very curious about how they'll taste.

Here's the actual plants. Both ichiban and Turkish orange(or is it orange Turkish?) are fairly large for eggplants. I guess 4 feet is typical so I have short stakes for them. I also have pruned them to have fairly bare stems at least up to a point as I have interplanted many things below them that need the light. I also limit their branching out. They don't get as overgrown as tomatoes but it does make it easier for me to see what's going on and in theory their fruit should be more consistent, especially the ichiban.

My latest poll is closed. The results are as follows

• Cats-5 (55%)
• Flowers-6 (66%)
• Tomatoes-6 (66%)
• Bugs-4 (44%)
• Birds-5 (55%)
• Greens-8 (88%)
• Weeds-7 (77%)
• Compost-8 (88%)
• Disease-6 (66%)
• Death-3 (33%)
• Bokashi, come on, BOKASHI!-5 (55%)
• Ummmmmmm-4 (44%)

There was a total of 9 votes. Given that small sample I can only conclude that I will blog about whatever I feel as usual. I chose my topics at random anyway. Now I know that I do not have a large following but based on my analytics, I DO have more than 9 regulars and I do want their opinions.

Anyway, given the randomness I will do more posts about cats, because they amuse me and they are a secret joy to people. Why do we have LOLCATs? because people like them even if they are tired of them. So LOOK AT THESE CATS!

You'll also be hearing more about bokashi. I have noticed that my bokashi tomatoes look better than my non-bokashi tomatoes. I am also finding it cheaper and less complicated than as described by others. More on that later.

My final picture for this post shows a red lettuce bolting. This is not highly recommended. It looks kinda nice right now though. I am letting a number of my lettuces bolt. I probably should just pull most, if not all of them up but I do have guilty feeling when I perform herbicide on my domesticated plants. The pluses of letting this bolt is that later I may collect seeds for future plantings. The blooms will attract beneficial insects and if I really let it go, I will have no need to sow any lettuce seeds. My permaculture tendencies are showing.

Dew, my terrace, tulip bulbs etc...

I'm back to taking some pictures then blogging a few days later. It's amazing how fast things change and given my freestyle gardening, how busy I get. I did a lot in back but I still need to sow more scarlet runner beans and some more beans in front. Todd made me watch some permaculture videos which is what I am leaning towards. Some videos came from the Permaculture Research Institute of Australia. This is pretty cool stuff, makes me wanna pack up and find 5 acres somewhere.

Here's a dewy cabbage with dewy self-sown fennel. Self-sown plants are one aspect of permaculture. The bottom line is getting the most whatever it is you want with the least amount of effort. I did a post, Lazy Man's Way which seems pretty close to the perma culture philosophy. I am glad that this is catching on in some places.

One thing I saw a lot in the permaculture planting were terraces. Terraces can make passive irrigation pretty simple. This small terrace here isn't exactly set up to water itself, but it's true that I could water the top to overflowing and just let it filter down. This terrace has filled out quite a bit since I established it.

This tulip is not an example of permaculture. I decided to do the extra work of lifting my bulbs this year. Usually I leave them which leads to them gradually dying out. I really liked the flowers so I thought I'd try lifting them which give me the option of planting them in a different location. At this point I DO rotate my crops. I follow the simple rule of not planting brassicas, and plants in the tomato family in the same location consecutively. I'm not absolutely strict about that but it does makes me keep some semblance of structure I guess.

This tulip bulb has a smaller bulb that grew on the surface of the soil. Perhaps 6 of my bulbs had this going on. From what I understand tulips are native to a place that gets hot and dry after they bloom. Somewhere in Turkey? I'm too lazy to see if I am remembering that correctly. I guess that in the wild surface bulbs like this would break away from the parent plant and get scattered, hopefully to a nice new bed. Right now the bulbs I dug up are in a paperbag on my porch mixed with some vermiculite to help them dry up a bit. Then I'll store them in the basement til September. I hope this works out well.

I posted this picture because it has a cat in it. The bare spot of soil is where the tulips were. I intend to sow some beans here, maybe more flageolet. I probably should harvest the lettuce.