karl.tsakos.us/blog

As any gardener knows, this year the tomato blight is out of control. As my Mother has told me, all tomato plants get blight, so be prepared. Unfortunately, this year is one of the worst for it. The weather has been cool and rainy for most of the summer, the dreaded blight’s favorite conditions.

New Jersey, which gains much revenue from their tomato harvest, has been very hard hit. Apparently, they have had to sacrifice the majority of their crops. Conventional wisdom is once the plant has it, get rid of the plant. I am trying to buck conventional wisdom. Being the inexperienced gardener I am, I have excuses to experiment blindly.

For one thing I refuse to give up on my plants. Instead of removing any plants showing leaves that dry over night, I am removing the offending branches. As a result, my plants have most of their foliage about two feet above the ground. That’s a good thing as the blight can be transfered to the leaves from soil that splashes on the plants in the rain.

My method of preventative maintenance likewise bucks convention. I have never been a fan of chemicals (they’re scary) and don’t like the idea of spraying my food with any. After some research on the Internet, I came up with the plan of spraying the plants weekly or after a rain with a solution of one part milk and seven parts water. Milk is a sort of fungicide. In addition, tomato plants can always benefit from calcium, so it the runoff is also beneficial.

I have no idea if this will work, but I have my fingers crossed.

I’m still waiting for a tomato to ripen. I have several large tomatoes right on the brink of ripening. At the moment it’s a race of time. I’ve already lost two tomatoes to the blight. I know because they were far from ripening and were going bad from the stem. Stupid blight.

All I want is to make a salad of heirloom tomatoes with some olive oil on them. Of all the plants I planted this year, this is the one real goal I had. The tomatoes are it. Everything else was just for the sake of seeing what would grow. Turns out, most things. That’s not to say I haven’t enjoyed my harvested plants thus far. I have thoroughly. I have enjoyed everything from the prepping the garden beds, to selecting the plants, to starting them from seed and watching them grow. The joy of eating what I’ve grown has been a pleasure.

It’s just that I really want to eat my own, home grown tomatoes. That’s not too much to ask. Is it?

Right now, I’m sitting in the back yard with a warm July breeze blowing and a nice cold Gin and Tonic. In the Kitchen the beets and carrots from my garden are roasting in the oven with rosemary, garlic, oil, and vinegar. The pasta water is heating and I’ll check it soon. This is going to be an experimental dish. I forgot to get some lamb chops to go with the veggies. We’ll see how it goes.*

It’s been brought to my attention recently that I don’t blog about anything but my garden. That’s something that has been lingering in the back of my mind as well. I know I have other things to say, but now, as I sit down to write, the garden is the topic that pleases me the most. I’m sure I will return to writing about other things when I start spending less time outside. Two cases in point: the band is very close to being done recording and then I will have lots to talk about with that and, I’m working on a video podcast but I want to have a couple of episodes under my belt before I launch it.

So, we are left with the garden for the time being.

Did you know potato plants bear fruit? I didn’t know that either. No, I’m not talking about the potatoes themselves, those are tubers. Actual growths on the stem under ground. The plants themselves produce flowers and from the flowers small green tomato like things grow.

As a matter of fact, both plants are closely related. That is of course why their names both end in “ato.” Actually, I just made that up. The potato’s latin name is “Solanum Tuberosum, “ and the tomato’s is “Solanum Lycopersicm.” They are both members of the nightshade family – the deadly nightshade family. And, while tomatoes are edible, the stems, leaves, and fruit of potato plants all contain glycoalkaloids, most prevalent of which are solanine and chaconine. These poisons affect the nervous system resulting in weakness and confusion. And, of course, could result in death.

I just love growing plants that both produce an enjoyable edible component and something that might kill me all at the same time.

Speaking of edible members of deadly plant families, my tomato plants are out of control! The ones I started are all about two and a half feet tall. The plants my mother gave me are over three feet tall. And not only have they all started flowering, but several are growing tomatoes. And, speaking of growing, my cucumber plants have also started flowering and producing little spiny cucumbers.

I striped out the sugar snap plants, which were dying, and removed their trellis. The bed is now fully occupied by the cucumbers and potato plants. That and a lone pepper plant that deiced it was going to try and survive despite being hidden under the cucumber plant. Oh, and the bean plants I planted are now producing beans.

More to come on the garden and other topics. I promise.

* For the record, the pasta with grilled carrots and beets was delicious. Some of the garlic was a little burnt, but other than that it was just right.

It’s been a while since my last update. A lot has been going on outside of the garden that has distracted me from my reports. Things have slowed down now and I’m taking the time to enjoy having a yard. The sun has just gone down but the sky is still light. The birds are quietly chirping in the trees before they retire for the evening. And, I’m sitting in my backyard by the garden, watching the fireflies and enjoying a Rusty Nail.

The garden is quite lush thanks to all the rain we have had recently. It’s been nice not having to water every day. I don’t water the day after a good rain either, the roots need a little bit of a break. So, the garden has proved to be low maintenance for the most part.

I’ve been enjoying the sugar snap peas. I have been steaming them and then serving them with pasta, mint leaves, and feta cheese. Quite a delicious meal. The mustard greens, although gone to flower, are nice and spicy. My friends and I have discovered they go perfectly on a hamburger.

I’ve learned from the sad excuse for a frame I made to support the sugar snap peas that I really should get something a little better equipped to handle the wind for the beans I planted. I purchased a couple of 2-foot wide trellises at the home center and set them up leaning slightly out of the garden bed. The make a very nice addition to the garden. I’ve also started staking the tomato plants. That’s right, not only have the plants my mother gave me done well, but the plants I started which gave me such trouble for so long are now almost as big as hers.

Everything else is coming along quite nicely as well. I’ve stopped eating the first batch of lettuce as it’s bolted, but the next batch will ready for eating in about a week. My kale is healthy, but really is supposed to be best after a frost. I’m not entirely sure why I planted it so early. Just a miscalculation I guess. Hey, get off my back – first time gardener.

The only thing not working out so well are the pepper plants. The weather has been overcast or cool and the peppers are being overshadowed by the out of control potato plants. I think when all is said an done I will have just one pepper plant. The herbs are also doing, well, okay. They aren’t growing very fast and the yield seems to be less than I was hoping for. I think I need to give them their own bed next year and not keep them in planters. But then again, the weather may have a lot to do with it.
I was going to write about how I have spent several evenings in the back yard and haven’t seen any bats. Well, that would now be a lie. I’ve now seen at least two of them flying around as I write this. I love to watch their tortured flight paths as they try to catch their prey.

While I’ve spent so much of my time thinking about how great it is to have a yard to garden in, I’ve forgotten about it’s other pleasures. After work I’ve come out here with a drink and just sat quietly admiring my handy work and watching the slow progress of the garden. I’ve made myself breakfast and sat here eating it in the early morning sun. I’ve had friends and family here for grilled dinners and frivolities. In all, the enjoyment I’m reaping from this yard and garden is greater then the effort I have put in. Heck, the work I have put in is a pleasure too.

It’s been a rainy week. Some plants are going to flower, other are stupid annoying plants who refuse to grow beyond their cotyledon state.

I picked a not so great week to be on vacation. It’s rained almost every day and has been overcast ninety percent of the time. Temperatures have been lurking in the sixties. Not much inspiration for getting out and gardening or doing much else outside for that matter. I did go mountain biking with my friend one day. Hey, part of mountain biking is getting muddy. But at home, the rain and cool temperatures have lead to mushrooms growing on the lawn and in the garden. So, I haven’t been out in it much as it’s a less fun muddy.

On the other hand, the rain has been great for the garden. Most of my plants are growing like gang busters. My snap peas have started to flower. Good news since that means I will soon have snap peas to eat. Then again, the mustard greens have also gone to flower. I’m not sure what that means for mustard greens. When lettuce and spinach bolt and then flower, the leaves aren’t very tasty anymore. Mustard greens are already bitter; will have to investigate.

Speaking of mustard greens, they’re very good on a grilled burger. I’m just sayin’.

The lettuce has been bountiful and I’ve been enjoying fresh salads whenever the mood strikes me. The new lettuce plants have sprouted, but I think there will be a gap between their being edible and the others bolting. Ah well, there will be other vegetables to keep me occupied.

Pretty much any of the plants I started indoors have stalled at the cotyledon stage. I moved them all into the garden where some have died and others seem to have started growing, all be it slowly. I planted some beans about a week ago and they are already bigger than the indoor seeds. I’ve added some fresh chicken manure around the garden with hopes that it will help. It could just be that the potting soil I got is worse then crap (since I’m using crap for fertilizer and that does work).

My herbs are all doing fairly well, except of course for the ones I started indoors. I already gave up on the sage and bought some at the store. If I don’t see signs of improvement in the next few days, it will be the same fate for my basil and thyme. Coincidently, the herbs I started growing outdoors, such as the fennel and chives, are doing well.

Speaking of herbs, I was finally able to find some marjoram, but I’m still unable to find any tarragon. Oh, there’s plenty of basil, oregano, sage, and thyme at the stores, but there seems to be a real lack of the less common herbs. I wonder why that is. No, really – I wonder.

Not much else is happening in the garden. Until next time then.

So much has happened. And yet, some things that should have happened didn’t happen.

First, I’ve been eating my lettuces and mustard greens. Both farm fresh and delicious. The radishes are all gone. They were eaten on french bread with butter or in a salad. They had very mild flavors for radishes and were fairly small in size. I will most likely plant some more since they should be able to grow most of the summer.

Good news, it’s finally rained. You’ll recall I purchased and installed a rain barrel. From the time I purchased it there has been no rain. At least two weeks without rain. My friends and family who live fifteen to thirty miles away from me had big thunderstorms with rain. I had thunder. When at last it did rain, the barrel filled right up and overflowed. So first, I didn’t have to water my garden because it was raining. Then I got to use free water from the barrel. And today, there is a chance of thunderstorms to refill the barrel. I’ve used very little of the water, but I’d rather it stay topped off.

Lets see, I’ve added some planters in the garden filled with herbs. I now have two types of parsley, sage, thyme, greek oregano, coriander, dill, chives, purple basil, and bronze fennel. Oh, and of course, the rosemary bush.

The volunteer plants are doing well. The garlic is still very strong and healthy. It’s nothing compared to the potato plants which are the fastest growing in my garden.

Speaking of fast growing, the poison ivy I poisoned; it didn’t act very poisoned. So today, I had round two of the rip the poison ivy out of the shrubs and ground festival. That went mostly well, although, I see there are still some spots I missed. Perhaps I will try the poison again. If not, it’s out with the hedge and see if removing it’s habitat doesn’t free me of the evil poison ivy. Of course, after the mighty battle I threw out the clothes, rubber gloves, and sneakers I was wearing. All old and ready to be sacrificed for the cause.

I also follow the theme of ripping things out by weeding the mulch around the garden. You’ll recall that I didn’t do a very good job of covering the grass when I mulched. Well,the good news is that grass growing through mulch can be torn out relatively easily.

On the lawn front — I gave in. I bought a power mower for the lawn. I just couldn’t keep mowing the lawn regularly enough to use the manual mower. However, I continue to fight the battle against neighborhood noise. I bought a battery powered electric mower. I makes a nice whirring noise, and is silent compared to a two-cylendar mower. Also, it’s not self propelled, so I can still get some exercise from pushing it. Just to be clear, I didn’t get the mower to save the environment, I got it because it fits my life style. Now, if everyone around me would take my lead and get quieter mowers I could actually enjoy sitting in my yard while writing this without the noise of the mowers and weed eaters down the street. (As I wrote that last sentence, a marching band started playing at the school a few blocks over. I guess I’ll have to move to Montana if I want real quiet.)

Lastly, the new additions to the garden. Under the category of things that should have happened but didn’t, my tomato seedlings just stopped growing. They got as far as the point where they grow real leaves and then stopped. So I said to heck with it, I’m going to plant them in the garden and see what happens. If they die then it’s off to the store to buy some new ones. If they grow then huzzah! I’m holding off a little longer on planting the peppers as they like very warm ground anyhow. We’ll see if they develop any more than the tomatoes did.

Finally, other additions to the garden are some beans and cucumbers. I also planted another bed of lettuces so when the current crop starts to bolt I’ll still have some growing to eat.

What’s old is new again. Especially if it’s poison ivy. Despite having been poisoned and then most of it’s roots ripped from the ground my poison ivy has started to grow again. Only a couple of small spots, but it’s still here. I will proceed with some surgical strikes (unlike the carpet bombing of last fall) where I carefully paint the herbicide onto it’s leaves. Let it die off gently, and then rip it’s roots from the ground. Again.

That’s item one in the list of things I don’t want growing in my yard and garden. The second is the abundance of maple sprouts. I have removed between two and six of them every day from the garden beds. That doesn’t include the small saplings I have mown over, or the larger saplings that will require clipping and forcible eviction from the yard.

On the wanted growth front, I’m getting to a point where I’m guessing more than I have been. Some plants seem to be done growing (the radishes) while others seem to be in need of thinning (lettuce) and others, well, I have no clue what stage they’re in or how I should be tending them. I’ll just let them be and see where things go.

I planted some unexpected garlic and potatoes in the garden. Despite being planted in the wrong season, the garlic seems to be doing well. I haven’t yet had any signs of further growth from the potatoes. I say “unexpected” and “further growth” because they weren’t intended to be planted in the garden this year. The garlic came from a clove I bought in the store that started to sprout. I planted it in a window box and it took off. I moved it to the garden and it continues to thrive. The potatoes were from a bag my mother gave me. She had bought some bulk potatoes at Costco and gave me a bag. I put the bag at the top of the cellar stairs when I promptly forgot about them. When I rediscovered them they had constructed a rather impressive root system. So I planted them in the garden.

I also replanted my rosemary bush, which I’ve had for several years. It’s always lived in a window box in the kitchen. Now it’s in a large pot as the centerpiece of my garden. We’ll see if it likes being outdoors for the first time in it’s life. So far so good.

All the plants which were already here when I moved in are lush and green with the exception of the hedge upon which I sprayed poison ivy killer, but even that’s coming back. The lawn is lush and healthy. Too healthy as a matter of fact. I’m going to have to revisit the mulching around my garden as the grass is poking through in several spots. I guess I should have been more thorough in how I dealt with it.

My radishes are ready for harvest. Can’t wait to see what I do with them. If I follow the lead of one of my local squirrels , I will just dig them up and eat them raw. Or, just eat the skin off of them to be more exact. Also, my carrots and beets are starting to produce carrot and beet like leaves. The lettuce and mustard greens are almost ready to be eaten as baby greens. I will most likely have a baby lettuce salad in the near future. You know, to thin the lettuce patch.

In other news, I ordered and installed a rain barrel. I’ll expand on that in another entry. In a couple of weeks my seedlings will be ready to plant in the garden and the weather will be warm enough to do so. More on that story as it develops?

(Continued from “Rock On, Part1: The Early Years.”)

After things had settled down, my friends from college, post college friends, and siblings would get together every Tuesday for ten cent wing night at a local bar. Sometimes we would get together afterwards and have acoustic folk jams at my brother’s and my apartment. Tom was still around and usually played with us. This common song reference actually resulted in one of my first public performances. Ridgefield, Connecticut was having a street sale where all of the stores opened their doors and setup stands to attract patrons. Tom was friends with the owner of the local music shop who happened to have a band setup on the sidewalk for people to try the instruments. Tom and I picked up the guitar and bass while the owner played drums and his son joined in on keyboard. We played for around an hour and attracted a small crowd.

My musical endeavors got even folkier when wing night dissolved. We discovered that my sister’s friend Liz also played guitar and sang. We wound up playing mostly cover songs and some original stuff with her. Every Thursday we would play open mic night at Jimmy’s Seaside in Stamford. Always the same group of people both in the audience and on stage. Often My brother would join in on vocals. This venue is where the tradition of picking a new band name for each performance started. The only name I can recall off the top of my head was “We Know a Cop.”

Actually, I’m not sure that was what happened next. It’s quit possible this next bit happened first but to be honest, this period of time was sort of amorphous and didn’t have any one particular style or outlet. Anyhow, I started to play lead guitar with my sister and Liz playing rhythm guitars. We tried a couple of bassests and a couple of drummers. We played at someone’s party once, and I can’t recall who was playing bass and drums. I think it was Kemmet on bass and Teague on drums.

Towards the end of that incarnation, I believe Jim M. started playing bass for us. As that band thinned out, it became just Kia, Jim M., and me. We started writing some original music. In our search for a drummer, we came across my other friend Jim D’s friend Dave. I didn’t really know it at the time, but this was the first time Dave had played drums in a band. He had played other instruments in several bands, but never the drums. This band actually gelled and we managed to make some multitrack recordings. We were all set to publish them with a fixed band name, “Rex Mundi” until we learned there was another band using that name. We decided to take the name of the CD for our band as well. Thus we were “Vufu.”

“Vufu” came to an end when my sister had her first child. That’s when Jim D. Started singing for us. The band became Me, Jim D., Jim M., and Dave. We eventually added Sean as a percussionist. The band also lost it’s name. We had become what could be best called an eclectic cover band, doing everything from country to metal. So it made sense to re-institute the tradition of picking a new name for every performance. And we did perform. Our band names included: “Piper Down,” “Autopsy Turvy,” “Tranz-Phat,” “Monkey-X Mystery Attack,” and “Hypnotoad.” I’m probably missing one or two.

As was becoming a new tradition, this band fell apart when our bassist, Jim M., and his wife had their first child.

As things were slowing down, Dave had started another band so he could play keyboards again and get out from behind the drums. Dave has had the closest thing to a musical career of anyone I know. His last band broke up because it was too hard to kept replacing the guitarist. This new band consisted of long time collaborator Edz on drums and one of his many guitarists Shaun. Dave asked me what I thought of the music and I said it was good but it lacked bass. He said they needed to find a bass player. I said, “Okay, I’ll do it.” Dave followed my bad impulse with the unwise, “Okay.” I say “bad”and “unwise” because it could have turned out poorly for our friendship.

As it turns out, we were a good match and I became the fourth member of the band. Because Dave didn’t want to be the singer this time, we started a search for a female singer. Thus, Christine joined the band.

I keep saying “the band” because we have yet to all agree on a name (although Dave and I both like “P.C.M.A.”). We will need one soon. We’re almost done recording our first album and then will want to play some gigs to promote it.

So, there you have the history of bands I’ve been in. Look for future installments where I will discuss some of the bands in a little more detail and provide some example recordings if I have any.