Black Gumbo

How Not to Have a Fall Weekend Adventure

noreply@blogger.com (Scott M. Head) — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 19:59:00 +0000

So we plan a fall day-trip, a family outing. Everyone is looking forward to it, for the weather is supposed to be nice and cool and my wife has this big stack of pictures from the last time they went to this place five years ago. The photos look charming, everyone had a great time, and I thought to myself all week long that surely everyone will enjoy this memorable excursion! The place in question is called "Dewberry Farm", a place where kids can pet farm animals, play on a few farm-related activities, run through a corn maze, see some pigs and have a hay ride. The stories of the previous outing to this quaint and family-centric activity farm had me very excited, so much that we asked friends and grandparents to go along. A perfect relaxing outing on the first truly cool weekend of the year, right?

I, of all people, should know better.

Our day began with the hour and a half drive through big city traffic, and once we had left the freeway and woven our way down a few off-the-path country roads, I was just beginning to sigh in delight at the rows of crops, the flocks of fall blackbirds, old rice paddies and canal pumps, and the typical country roads of farm land that I love to drive. It surely would be a fine day! Then, around a turn - there it was, a line of traffic. As we approached, men on horses with red flags directed car after car into a field to park. In the distance I spied long lines of people, surely this is the wrong place I thought. But no, there they were, the throngs of people who all had the same idea.

We rushed across the back forty parking lot, in which we found ourselves near the far fence line, shoving (not rolling) our stroller through the gravel and sand. On the other side, we saw the entrance of this not-as-quaint-as-the-pictures attraction. There were two lines of screaming children, angry parents, and people who probably could have used a few more pieces of clothing. Had we been wise, we would have written up our long car trek as a loss and gladly left right then. But surely it must be bigger inside, surely there would be so much to do that we would enjoy the day. We waited for what seemed like half the day, but was more likely closer to an hour. Once to the trailer where admission tickets were sold, we saw the five people inside, only two of whom were actually working. There we paid somewhere around $65 for our party to enter, and off we went to try to get our money's worth.

After wandering here and there a bit, I had that uneasy feeling that a fellow often gets when he realizes he's been taken to the cleaners. There was not really much to do that we could not have done at our local park or a neighborhood petting zoo. My little one pointed with glee at the goats and ducks and pigs, but that only lasts for a few minutes before the wonder dissipates into indifference. We stood among a crowd of hundreds to see a pig race, something I was lightly amused by in concept, greatly let down in experience. This is an event where piglets are herded into a makeshift starting gate while a local (really local) radio personality tells bad jokes about bacon and ham. After all, they need to make the effort of getting a spectator spot on the race track seem worth while. I say race track, but it was essentially a fenced in ring where said piggies simply ran through to get back to the shed where they were kept. Apparently some reward awaited them there, or sheer terror drove them. Once the race began, the little group dutifully ran around the loop, rather determined to get back to their pen, and then stood around at the end because the handler forgot to leave the door open. It lasted, as one might expect, all of 15 seconds, and then we left. That gut feeling of being hoodwinked by a clever entrepreneur was growing ever more noticeable.

We wandered to a pumpkin patch where most of the pumpkins were gnarly and more than a few had been busted up. I say patch, but it would be more aptly described as a couple dozen pumpkins haphazardly tossed onto some dirt and grass and kicked about by unruly children. My son, being a little tyke, thought they were balls, which for a brief second or two gave me a glimmer of delight that he was happy about something. When a guy in a John Deer utility truck came and started kicking the good ones away and picking up the fly-infested remains of broken pumpkins, my little boy felt betrayed, for "his" pumpkin was among those rolled away into a group of agitated children who would have offended any sensibility. I tried to ignore the proverb that kept coming to mind about a fool and his money. We walked on after attempting some photos.

It was suggested that we ought to try to eat, so we then sought to find which of the endless lines was the shortest. My oldest son, having an iron will, decided he wanted to eat a burger from the BBQ-Burger trailer. He stood in the long line as the rest of us departed for greener pastures, finding a more civilized shed with a cafeteria-like atmosphere. Sadly, the line was long here too. When we had split up to spy out the options, my phone rang, and my wife informed me of a little taco-in-a-bag stand where there was no line, at which great news I hurried over to the place. That evening, we would discover why there was no line, but I will spare those details. We gladly paid our money and sat on the concrete slab outside of the food shed and ate our meal. I say meal, but I am a well-read man, and can attest with confidence that in Stalinist Russia this meal just might have passed for army rations.

After eating this meal - and thankfully doing so, for the waiting such a meal had saved us - we noticed my oldest son had moved 10 feet or so in his BBQ-burger line. I was to learn later that he had been obliquely involved in a lively but one-sided discussion with a rather narcissistic family about the rigors of life as a 55 year old grandmother who gambles. His patience was rewarded with a grease-burger and an hour's worth of group philosophy. Said old lady apparently had some vociferous opinions on how to run concessions.

Having completed what we will generously call lunch, we decided to let our little toddler fellow wander around with his grandpa, while my daughter and I went for a snow-cone. We waited again for a long time, swatting flies and listening to children shriek and parents yell. I was somewhat concerned to discover that I could buy snow-cones, Kettle-corn, pot-bellied pigs and mules all at the same cash register. We managed to get our snow-cones, which actually amounted to the highlight of our day, and tracked down our group who were standing around doing pretty much nothing along with several hundred other disenchanted guests. At this point, one or two of us would wander off to some attraction to see if there was any hope of us getting to enjoy it sometime this decade while the rest of us wandered aimlessly around with the little fellow to redeem what time we had between line-standing. At least he found something of interest - a huge pile of backfill dirt, and no one was charging money to climb on it! He played in the dirt for a while, sampled the flavors of agriculture, and then walked off to the fence near what seemed to be a service shed. There, as if the glorious rays of heaven were emanating from them, were busted tractors and equipment, and he was fascinated (as most little boys are with tractors). As I ran through my mind a list of all the busted tractors I know of close to my house, some in walking distance, which are free to stand around and look at, that feeling of being taken for a fool began to turn to gurgling indigestion.

My daughter wanted to try the swing-around thing. Surely you have seen photos of swings rides that spin around, there's a famous one at Coney Island and the one we had at Houston's ill-fated Astroworld before they made an empty lot out of it was called the "Gunslinger". This "swing ride" was built upon the same principle, but that's where the similarity stopped. Propped up on an angle iron frame crudely welded together was one of those four-armed horse harnesses they use to tie up ponies so that they walk a circle. Hanging from the ends of these arms were ropes, and tied to the end of each of the four ropes was a sand bag. The idea, most assumed, was that the kid jumps up onto the sand bag and hangs on for dear life while some poor schmuck runs the circle to make the thing spin. Guess what? Schmuck-power comes from the parents or other willing victims. So my daughter, being daring and full of get-up-and-go, wanted the thing to spin fast. Who can deny a lovely daughter of daring-do? So I, still filled with taco-in-a-sack, ran as fast as I could pulling my daughter, four sandbags, and three other kids (who's parents wisely pretended to be ignorant of how all this works). Now this contraption, which not even a halfway respectable carnie would stoop to operate, was barely able to rotate on its rusted mechanism, and the added weight made me feel like an ox at the mill. I tried to be the heroic dad, and pulling as fast as I could, nearly fell over a few times. I played it off well like I meant to do it that way, wondering if OSHA might not be such a bad concept after all. So for the cost of a near heart attack, my daughter got to go around four or five times at a miserable rate, but it was all I could do just to keep on my feet - what with the indigestion building up every time I considered how much we paid for this great fun. I felt terrible for my little girl.

After we wandered a bit more, everyone was thinking the same thing. Our friends had ditched us long before, and we had seen enough of the thousands of disgruntled people, pathetic attractions and lackluster "agritainment". We began the long expedition back to the car, but decided since we had to trek across three counties before getting home, it would be smart to go to the restroom. Guess what? Yep, more lines.

After leaving this seething mass of screaming, miserable humanity, we journeyed home to an evening of moaning and recovery, for the diabolical little Soviet Army rations we had eaten were staging for a final assault. My oldest son and I agreed, we would have had more fun tossing $80 in pennies into a fountain or standing in line at the Department of Transportation.

Garden Update - Summer Heat

noreply@blogger.com (Scott M. Head) — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 16:12:00 +0000

Its been getting hot. Since the semi-weekly updates the garden has been a great source of joy for me. We're in the midst of quite a spell of drought and have been for some time now. Watering the garden daily has been a mandatory lifeline of the potted plants. But the heat has finally become too much for the tomatoes to bear now and they are not producing new fruit. The last picking revealed tomatoes that were inconsistent in their sweetness and some were actually rather woody due to repeated dry spells then waterings. The moderate warmth of spring was good to them but the heat of a dry summer has been a challenge. Had I covered them with a shade and run a drip system to keep the soils evenly moist, I believe I could still be producing, but I am not that devoted to the tomatoes to warrant such cost. Instead, I will be moving into summer heat mode.

I dug up the turnips as they had stopped putting on bulk and were themselves succumbing to the heat. Likewise, the carrots were having trouble with the heat. Though touted as summer tolerant, I think the summer is just too much for them. I managed to get a few and they were tasty carrots. The bell peppers are producing so many fruits that the plants lean, and the Jalapeno plants are still producing though not quite as profusely as they did at fist. They have a lot of new buds on them now so I may be looking at another good harvest, we'll see.

The varieties of cowpeas are producing, but I have discovered that I will need a larger plot of these summer hardy legumes if I plan to enjoy them frequently. My Sugar Cream cowpeas produced first, these are small creamy colored peas that have smaller pods than what I had expected. They produce well, its just they size of the pea will require more harvesting for a decent meal. The Kentucky Black Crowders are large peas, dark brownish black when dried, a lavender/maroon when not dry. The pods are large and long and they produce well. However, I only planted 4 square feet of each, and had only 75% of the seeds germinate due to heavy rains at planting time. Since pulling out the turnips and mustard green, I planted two more patches of cowpeas, some purple hulls and some Ozark Razorbacks. The Razorbacks are not sending out long tendrils and climbing like the other varieties, they may be more bushlike or may simply be too young. The Sugar Creams climb profusely but are not dense, while the Kentucky Black Crowders are both climbers and dense. I love these plants, they remind me of a lush rain forest and when I water them I love to hear the sound of the rain-like downpour on the broad green leaves.

I'll be retiring the tomato plants and converting them to compost soon, and through the summer will be bringing up cowpeas. I will be planning my fall garden, now's the time to be thinking about it.

My son Caleb and I have begin dismantling the play-fort/swing set thing that hurricane Ike damaged. We hope to put in a larger garden there. I am not sure if I want to try traditional, in-ground gardening or if I will do raised beds. I think I will first plant legumes to help the soil and then go from there, gradually improving the soil.

Here's a photo from a couple of weeks ago. The Kentucky Black Crowders are in the center and the Sugar Creams are to the right. Note the bird netting. Cardinals and Mockingbirds began to destroy most of my tomatoes and between the drought and the birds, I enjoyed fewer and fewer!

Week 14 & 15 Garden Update

noreply@blogger.com (Scott M. Head) — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 05:03:00 +0000

Its been three months now, time to fertilize again. I used Miracle Grow Potting Mix for the containers, a great medium which I am now sold on. It has a time release fertilizer that releases a steady 10-10-10 fertilizer for three months, so I've applied a booster of 10-10-10 in all the pots - also time released and said to be sufficient for three months. We'll see. I had hoped to go totally organic but my compost from previous years is just not enough to keep up with so many potted plants. I've not used any pesticides so far, natural or otherwise, but have not had many problems. There is a large colony of red assasin bugs in my garden and they earn their keep by patrolling for unwanted pests. They are generally beneficial insects so long as water is plentiful. If it gets dry they will extract water from your plants, but otherwise they are predators and feed on the bad kind of bugs.

Tomatoes are producing like crazy, especially the small varieties. I ate my first Cherokee Purple and it was outstanding! I've been harvesting a couple of pounds of tomatoes each day and eating them as I go, but the majority of the last days harvest has gone to soup (see previous post).

The cowpeas are bearing now and the carrots are putting weight on their roots. I samples one this week and it was, well, a carrot. I'm growing Amarillos, so they are yellow. They are supposed to make a decent summer carrot crop so we'll see.

My beets are getting beat by the sun, they are looking haggard on the topside, but the roots are putting on weight. I think I'm going to make Kvass with some of them and give the others to a friend for the same purpose. I ate a few of them raw last week and they are pretty good, not like what I remember from childhood (those were canned, pickled beets, yuck!).

The mustard greens are gone now, I ate enough of them but with the heat the bugs were eating more than me. I replaced them with more cowpeas, Ozark Razorbacks from Baker Creek. They are up and have their first true leaves. My Black Crowders are now producing, it will be a few more weeks before they are producing enough to make a meal. These ought to produce into the fall, judging from previous years. Very prolific. So far I've got one bed of them climbing some stakes, but they seem to be really viny, I'll need to build a better trellis. The other bed, with the Sugar Creams, are growing on a string trellis.

Looking forward to more good gardening! Here are some pics:

I love how things are getting taller	Sugary 123
An oddball variety, Green Sausage	Jalapenos keep producing.
Cowpeas starting to produce	Big Beefs, very tasty!
I pickled a batch of Jalapenos	Sliced, with olive oil, salt, pepper and a little Parmesian.

Making Garden Fresh Tomato Soup

noreply@blogger.com (Scott M. Head) — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 04:31:00 +0000

With the large yields I have been blessed with, I thought it would be a good time to try some fresh tomato soup. We had some a few weeks ago at a friend's house and I loved it, so I sought some recipes and decided to give it a try. (Pics take a while to load)

Most of the recipes online are either basic soup recipes or fancy gourmet efforts. I decided to try a simple recipe that stuck to the essentials. I found many recipes that met the required ease level, and because most of them called for ingredients I did not have (nor did I have the inclination to go get them) I opted to study the general idea and then make my own soup. Here's what I did.

These were gathered out of the garden today and from this group of Super Marzano Romas, a few Big Beefs, tons of Ravello baby Romas and some various others (including a huge Purple Cherokee not pictured), I started chopping.

Step 1
Chop up enough tomatoes to fill a large sauce pot. How do you like that for accurate measurements? I guess its about six to eight cups worth. Chop a large onion, three cloves of garlic, a few stalks of celery and sautee them in a stew pot until soft. I used a few teaspoons worth (eyeballed) of olive oil in the pot. Many recipes call for a carrot at this stage. I didn't have one. I added a few good dashes of sea salt and fresh ground black pepper:

Step 2
Add tomatoes once the other veggies are soft. Cook this until the tomatoes are soft and pulpy, mine took 15 minutes on high heat:

Step 3
Once the tomatoes are soft, add a teaspoon (mine was heaping) of whole wheat flour, this gives some thickening boost. Many recipes call for stock of some sort. I don't think it is necessary if you want pure tomato flavor, but I added a cup and a half (estimated) of beef broth to mine for a little flavor kick. I also added those two stems of basil seen in the photo above at this point and let it cook another few minutes. Here's what it looked like:

Step 4
Puree the whole thing. I used a hand held blender thing my wife swears by and did it in five or six small batches. It worked fine. Next, strain the puree through a sieve, you want to remove the skins and whatever chunks did not get liquefied if you have picky eaters. Some skins will get through, no big deal:

Step 5
I returned my soup to the stove in the the large sauce pot, the stew pot is now too large. Simmer until reduced by 1/3 or so. It is tasty and good now, but if you want a creamier soup, reducing it will make room for cream or milk.

Step 6
Once reduced, add cream to your preference. We used whole milk instead to cut down on fat, and it was just perfect. The cold milk reduced the heat enough to enjoy immediately. I overdid the pepper for many people's tastes, but we like it spicy. All the recipes state that the soup can be frozen if you don't add the dairy component until re-heating and serving.

Once tested by my daughter, I received the thumbs up. I love it and think this is a great way to get garden fresh tomatoes on the table. It was once of the best basic tomato soups I've ever had!

Week 12 Garden Update

noreply@blogger.com (Scott M. Head) — Tue, 19 May 2009 22:04:00 +0000

Its getting to be a snarled mess in the garden, and I'm enjoying a few ripe tomatoes each morning as a snack. The fruits of the larger varieties are starting to go from bright green to a yellowish green indicating that they will be table ready very soon. Birds are already interested, making me think bird deterrent efforts may be underway soon. I'm done with the mustard greens, good as they were, its getting too hot and the bugs are enjoying them more than I am, so they will give way for more summer cowpeas. There's a yellow-green treefrog living among them so he'll need to relocate. The beets are putting on some root weight now and I ate the first one this week raw, just to say I did. It was actually pretty good, and being a guy who has always hated beets, that's saying something!

Watering the containers has been a key to success. Because they are containerized, we've had to stay on top of it or the tomatoes begin to look wilty. I'm due to fertilize them this week too, I'll report on that later. Because the containers are rather small, keeping the plants well nourished is critical to getting the most out of the plants. Here are some photos from week 12.

Cowpeas getting close to blossoms, and some carrots starting to build up root.	Huge jalapenos ready for eating, and some nice tomatoes. Pico, anyone?
Overall view for week 12	Clusters!

Week 10 Garden Update

noreply@blogger.com (Scott M. Head) — Tue, 12 May 2009 05:31:00 +0000

The heat is on. This week we've hit the mid 90s in temperature and the potted plants are needing water every day or two. The tomatoes have gone wild, there are literally a couple hundred tomatoes on the plants now and more blossoms every day. I believe it will be a very good year.

The cowpeas are taking off in the heat and the beets are now beginning to set roots. The Jalapenos are producing like crazy (they are quite hot) and I supplied a handful of peppers to our recent church mothers day picnic. They gave the Pico a nice kick.

I've given up on the mustard greens, I eat em as I can but they are going to be overtaken by the cowpeas soon, so I am thinking of harvesting the whole lot and making a mess of green for our weekly potluck at church. Yum! I'm going to give the carrots some more time, they have nice long yellow taproots finally and should bulk up soon.

Overall the garden now looks how I like it - a jungle! Here are some photos (yes, the grass needs to be cut so no overall views this time)

Loads of tomatoes	Huge Romas
Yum!	Getting ripe
Lushness	Jalapenos!

Week 8 Garden Update

noreply@blogger.com (Scott M. Head) — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 18:32:00 +0000

We've had some serious rain, 10 inches over a day or two, and then again we had 4 inches in a day just this past week. Today we got another 2" overnight and the garden seems to be handling it just fine. Its a good thing these are raised beds for good drainage. The tomatoes love it, since the water drains out quickly and leaves good, untreated, natural moisture behind. At the week 8 mark, I've managed to snap some photos between thunderstorms. The beans are starting to pick up the pace a bit, and the greens are still strong. I'm eating them as I thin them, very tasty and mild. I moved my bell peppers out of a rather sorry potting mix I had bought and re-potted them in the same stuff the tomatoes are growing in, hopefully that will save them from the difficult time they were having. They were yellowed and stressed and lost their leaves. Now they are yellowish green, stressed but are putting on new leaves. The potting mix I used did not retain moisture well, I believe.

My Star of David Okra plants have come up even though I had assumed they were goners. They are growing in the midst of four tomato plants that I did not want to get rid of, so we'll see who wins the plot. The okra will eventually overtake the tomatoes, but perhaps the tomatoes will produce fruit before that happens.

Our basil is being harvested as needed and we have tiny little jalapenos forming. The beets are beaten up by the rains but seem to always come back, their leaves are looking a bit haggard and old now. Hopefully the roots will begin packing in the storage soon. The carrots are probably going to test me too long, but for now they get to stay until I need the area for more beans.

Here are the latest pics. The grass needs cutting but its either been raining or we've been busy every weekend. This weekend the grass gets cut!

Plumping up nicely!	An overall view
Lushness	Cluster of tomatoes

Here's our basil, man what a great smell! We used some just last night in the spaghetti sauce and I have visions of a Roma-Basil pizza in a month or two.

Week 7 Garden Update

noreply@blogger.com (Scott M. Head) — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 15:27:00 +0000

Its been seven weeks plus a few days and the garden is beginning to produce. The tomatoes have loads of tiny fruits appearing and I'm having to tie up many of the plants higher on the stakes. This morning I spread a few out and have distributed some of the pots between the raised beds. I'm looking forward to a bumper crop of tomatoes, and I am quite pleasantly surprised by how healthy these tomatoes are compared to my two big-box store tomato plants. The two Celebrity plants purchased at Home Depot are doing terribly, barely hanging on.

The beets are impressive plants, rains beat them down and they pop right back up. The Mustard Greens are very tasty, I had some last week from the thinnings. I'm going to have to thin again, they are crowding each other out. My carrots are puny and may test my patience too much, I might plant that whole bed in beans soon, at least they will grow through the heat of summer. I harvested all the radishes, they are yummy!

This past weekend we had a huge thunder storm blow through. Not uncommon for our area, in fact the streets here get flooded several time s a year. The heavy rain really pelted the plants, especially the carrots and beets, but the beets came right back, the carrots needed a little help to get them un-stuck from the soil. The natural deep watering seems should be a great help! Here's a shot of our street during the flooding, we get a kick out of the antics that we see when the water rises.

Pleasant Gardening

noreply@blogger.com (Scott M. Head) — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 22:50:00 +0000

There are many things I like about gardening. When it is spring and the waiting begins for the crops to bear, there is little to do but watch, monitor the health of the plants, water, weed and feed. But with a tidy little garden growing, I was inspired to tidy up my old compost bin area. I had two of them there and another on the opposite side of the house, but have not been actively composting. I've allowed the two full compost bins on my 'working' side to slowly compost down to good stuff naturally apart from turning, mainly because we did not garden last year and I was lazy about it. But after pulling out all the weeds on the backside of the bin, the good stuff was there, a ton of it. I filled four large five gallon pots with rich compost before tearing out the old wire cage to put in the new one.

Composting has not always been an active activity for me, for I usually just let stuff rot and rarely turn it properly, but if I can get a good, green/brown balance going, Ill do what I'm supposed to do.

This year, around the front of the house, my little fig tree is finally getting up some gumption and growing. Its put on a host of leaves since being pushed nearly over by hurricane Ike. It lost a few branches (twigs, really) and all its leaves, but is really taking off after two years. Originally, I had planted two, one didn't make it and this one was just a little sapling at best. Hopefully I will be able to enjoy the fig tree's celebrated trait of fast growth. I love figs, can't wait until I can get some home grown ones!

Today I also went ot to harvest some radishes, thought a photo of these beauties was warranted. I ate a bunch of them while washing them, sort of like spicy candy!

Since planting, we've had far more visitors to our back yard. Of course, these little guys don't eat the fruit yet, and I am sure some of the feathered visitors will be my adversaries as soon as they see red tomatoes, but for now, they are welcomed guests. I had a Chickadee scolding me yesterday, a Cardinal building a nest, a pair of Mourning Doves came by, a flock of Grackles patrolled the yard for bugs, and then the blackbirds moved in to clean up the leftovers. A mockingbird chided them all for trespassing, and the ever present sparrows jockeyed for position on the best branches to keep the dogs in view. I love these common birds, and enjoy the uncommon visitors as well. Though most of the local songbirds birds don't eat anything I am growing, the blackbirds, sparrows, mockingbirds and grackles will eat tomatoes, or at least poke them to see what they are, thus putting a nice hole in every fruit before moving on. Frustrating. But for now, I welcome them.

I've tried bird netting in the past and it works pretty well, but its a hassle. I hope this year I have enough to go around.

First Produce

noreply@blogger.com (Scott M. Head) — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 06:41:00 +0000

Radishes should be part of every garden if only because they are easy, fast, and impressive. You can't go wrong with them. They give a gardener quick gratification when everything else is only starting to show signs of bounty. Besides, they are delicious. I think I ate half of these young radishes as candy today.

4 Weeks into the season, pictorial

noreply@blogger.com (Scott M. Head) — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 04:59:00 +0000

Photos from the garden taken yesterday morning.

Mustard Greens in need of thinning	Radishes, almost ready
Cowpeas getting strong	Buckets of tomatoes
Future tomato	Beet sprouts
The tomato corner	An overall view

Four week garden update

noreply@blogger.com (Scott M. Head) — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 16:20:00 +0000

Its been four weeks since we planted, give or take a few days, and we're seeing the bounty begin to grow. The tomatoes survived the cold snap because it really didn't get too chilly. We have the benefit of living closer to the Gulf of Mexico than those on the northern side of town, and that usually keeps us warmer than the weather report. Our mustard greens are carpeting the plot, I'll need to thin them but can't bring myself to do so yet, they are amazing in their vigor. The radishes are just about ready, some could be pulled today and enjoyed! Fast! Everyone needs radishes, if only to give a quick success and encouragement each season.

Our cowpeas have been off to a rather labored start. Because they thrive in hot weather, I really don't expect them to go crazy in their growth until its hot. In the mean time, some of them have succumbed to bugs and critters, but there are enough to grow a big mess of beans. I'll seed some others where the no-go plants have died.

My carrots are slow growing, and the beets are no quick performers either, although the roots I've pulled for thinning are blood-red inside. The tomatoes are healthy and have many blossoms, hoping my cheapskate method of caging and staking will be sufficient (bamboo tripods with lots of string). I've done well with it before, and managed to keep plants well groomed and contained, but who knows. With so many tomato plants, I'm not too concerned if I mess up a few.

I've got some okra finally coming up where I had written it off. Not sure if I let it grow because I planted some more tomatoes there already. I think I'll see if they can grow together.

Pics coming later, for I really enjoy the garden. Its a lovely thing!

Tomatoes and a Chilly Night

noreply@blogger.com (Scott M. Head) — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 16:37:00 +0000

The weather man is telling us it will get to 34 degrees tonight. Now for you northerners, that's no big deal, but down here its already been in the 80s and we wore shorts to the park yesterday. Talk online about tomato plants is varied, some say that anything under 40 degrees will set back tomato plants and stunt them, some say don't worry until it actually freezes. I'm going to go with the wait and see approach for two reasons. First, my tomatoes are doubled in size from when we put them out and all seem extremely healthy and should weather a brief spell of cold (its only going to be chilly for a few hours). Second, its usually a bit warmer than the official forecast in my area, since we are closer to the coast than the Houston weather guys. We average around 2 to 4 degrees warmer. I figure we will make it to 36 or so tonight, for a few hours max. We'll see.

Garden Warfare Update - Slugs are losing

noreply@blogger.com (Scott M. Head) — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 18:13:00 +0000

The ammonia and water tactics mentioned in the prior post must be working. My son and I hunted slugs over three nights and killed over 300 of the nasty critters. Some were huge and had they made their way to the garden plots there would surely have been trouble. Last night we reloaded the spray bottle, grabbed the flashlight and headed out for a fourth night of carnage. What did we find? Only one brave slug. Either it is working and the population has been greatly reduced or the windy night was keeping them down. We will return tonight to see how the battle fares.

Update: They sent reinforcements. 220 of them to be exact. We went out today after all the rain and dispatched more tonight than any other single night. Wow. We ought to have been measuring in pounds o' slug rather than numbers. Now realizing that all this time there have been over 500 slugs crawling around my back yard is pretty gross. I wonder when we will see a genuine decline in numbers? Surely there can't be thousands of them? Well, if there are, we will continue shooting them with ammonia water. Its gratifying!

Slugs and Killing Them

noreply@blogger.com (Scott M. Head) — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 17:36:00 +0000

Now that we have planted the garden, we begin the battle with garden pests. We've always had slugs, living in Houston they are just part of the outdoors. We also have dogs who eat outside and scatter their dog food around. This is prime slug bait, and inadvertently we have attracted every slug within miles to our back yard. They show up at night to eat the leftover bits of dog food in the grass that had been overlooked by the dogs or left out overnight. While this is unwise and is being remedied, the good side of it is that the slugs are not anywhere near the garden - yet. They are conveniently where the easy food is. This makes it easy for us to manually eliminate the ones we can see. I'm reluctant to use poisons or harsh chemical methods, so we are doing the water/ammonia mixture treatment so often touted by gardeners on the various forums. It works. It works well. 1 art ammonia to 4 or 5 parts water in a spray bottle was all it took. That mixture, sprayed on a slug, causes death almost immediately. It is also a cheap source of nitrogen for the plants, but be careful not to mix too strong a mixture and it is probably wise to go easy on it. We tried to keep the spray on the actual slug itself and didn't 'carpet bomb' by saturating an area.

We hunted them last night eliminating over 100 slugs from our yard, and will go back nightly for a week. It is said that after a week of manually reducing the population, the problem is fairly under control. I hope so.

Here are some links on slug warefare.
Using Ammonia to kill Slugs
Controlling Slugs and Snails in Your Garden
Garden Slugs: Organic and Natural Slug Control
Ammonia Slug Control
Ugh...Slugs! & Snails too
How to get rid of garden slugs

Our Spring Garden Inventory

noreply@blogger.com (Scott M. Head) — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 04:47:00 +0000

This evening my son and I finished transplanting 20 plus tomato plants and two Jalapeno pepper plants into containers. We have another bunch of tomato plants to go, but these are the 'backup' plants because we're out of room. Some will undoubtedly get thinned as the months roll on. Potting the tomatoes is something I've never done, so we'll see how it goes. After doing some research, I believe we've potted well within the guidelines of what is considered proper 'tomato potting.' We will need to spread them out as they get larger.

As for the inventory, time will tell if the garden produces from the various veggies we've planted:

In the raised beds I have Sugar Cream cowpeas, Kentucky Black Crowders, Amarillo carrots, Saxa 2 radishes, Detroit Dark Red Beets, Southern Giant Curled Mustard Greens and Star of David Okra. I'll edge the garden with various herbs a little later, depending on what the companion planting guide says is best.

In containers we have various tomato varieties including Beefy Boy, Belgian Beefsteak, Sugar Snow, Super Marzano, Cherokee Purple, Ravello, Cabernet, Rutgers, Parks Whopper, and Green Sausage, among a few others. We've got two Yellow Bell Pepper plants and two Jalapeno Pepper plants potted as well. Our Bells did pretty poorly last time, so maybe this year we'll get some useful fruit.

While preparing the garden area this year, I replaced the hog wire fence. It was damaged by hurricane Ike and quite ravaged by the weed eater along its bottom, leaving loose wires through which curious weenie dogs could escape. To avoid the weed eater damage, I am trying some of that plastic weed control sheeting that is supposed to act as a mulch and last for 10 years. Its pretty weak stuff, but it has been laid under the fence and we've got some potted plants sitting atop it. Hopefully it will keep the grass down and make for a more sightly and kept garden fence, as sightly and kept-looking as a hog wire fence can be.

Its time to enjoy seeing the seedlings grow strong!

We're all planted

noreply@blogger.com (Scott M. Head) — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 14:28:00 +0000

Callie helped me with the last of our raised beds, we had to turn the soil in this one pretty deeply. Unfortunately the fallow year was not kind to this last bed, Ike dropped heavy tree limbs on it and it had lots of compacted soil. I'd rather have preserved the soil's natural 'bio-balance' by not disturbing it too terribly much, but we had to remove plenty of deep rooted weeds and loosen it up. Well, at least its nice and rich.

We planted this garden plot knowing it will receive less sun than the other two, it is a little close to some trees. I placed beets here, and some Star of David okra, hoping the okra will get enough light to at least produce, but knowing it won't get unruly due to less than full sun.

We put some greens and carrots in the center plot and some radishes in the leftover portions of our first plot. Our cowpeas have sprouted and hopefully will be as prolific and vigorous as previous years, I'll be replacing the radishes and carrots with more cowpeas later in the season since they grow well through the heat of summer.

So technically, the raised beds are planted. We'll move on to the pots next. My daughter, my son and I will be potting our tomatoes this weekend, they are getting a little leggy and are overdue to be transplanted. If the potted tomatoes do well, we should have quite an abundance of them, and many varieties!

Tomatoes by the many

noreply@blogger.com (Scott M. Head) — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 19:40:00 +0000

Well so much for beans only.

Today a friend delivered to my office parking garage 40 little tomato plants for me. I had forgotten that last year we were discussing our common interest in veggie gardening and he said "Yeah my dad raises and sells tomato plants, I'll set you up in the spring." Well, he did. 40 plants. 20 varieties. Most heirlooms. Wow!

Now I have a dilemma. I planted lots of cowpeas just the other day, intending to plant just a few tomatoes this year. I have one more plot ready to be planted with more veggies this weekend. But 40 plants?! So I decided, in the space of a few minutes, that we will have containers full of tomato plants this year in addition to the three raised beds, effectively expanding the garden more than twofold in terms of plants. The problem is, I have very few containers and don't want to break the bank. "Never fear," says I, "I'll improvise".

Then today, my buddy in labor sitting next to me says "Hey, I have a bunch of containers sitting in my garage, you can have 'em." So there ya go! He's a rose gardener and collects various varieties, and has gathered up a bunch of large containers over the years. Perfect!

So there we have it. Tomatoes by the container. Now to get some container-suitable soil mix and we're off to a good start for '09!

2009 Garden under way

noreply@blogger.com (Scott M. Head) — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 21:29:00 +0000

So we planned to be on time this year getting our garden in the ground. The over-ripe topsoil with un-composted compost from the year before last is now just good, healthy dirt. We let 2008 go by without planting much due to pressing schedules, unforeseen things, and other calls upon time, but we busted up the fallow ground this weekend and now will be growing food again. We've nearly missed our window to plant on time, and according to the various planting calendars should have had stuff in the ground between January and last weekend. So we're a week late on the May first stuff. Well, that's better than we've done in the past.

We loved the cowpeas so much that I will be planting a bunch of them this year as well. I ordered seed from Baker Creek last December and am ready to try a few varieties. I love these things. They grow like wildfire, produce all through our heated summers, and choke out everything that is not supposed to be in the garden. We'll need that weed-shading feature considering the amount of weeds we've removed this weekend - surely the roots and seeds of a fallow year will bring trouble this year. Mulch and vigorous plants will hopefully make weeding easier.

We have three 4'x8' raised beds, not too terribly much for food production, but enough to supplement with a load of beans! That's just shy of 100 square feet of space. Two of the three plots will be the cowpeas, I plan to grow some other stuff in the third plot.

We don't strictly garden by the square foot method but we do pack the plants in. With a little SFG method applied, we make our three plots produce well. At least it has in the past. I hope to add another area of cowpeas along my back fence since these cowpea seeds grow literally in the yard when dropped. I'll use them to climb and cover my ugly Ike-damaged fence.

Caleb wants to grow some Bell Peppers and I plan on Jalapenos. We will grow these in containers, and I might plants a couple of tomatoes in pots this year.

So there's our garden update, after a fell year of no garden. 'Bout time!

Camping trip

noreply@blogger.com (Scott M. Head) — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 23:41:00 +0000

Its been a long while since I posted anything remotely related to why we started Black Gumbo, but that doesn't mean we aren't doing stuff.

Caleb and I are going to be reporting on the state of our veggie garden as soon as spring allows us to see what actually will take off and produce this year. We let our garden go last year due to a number of factors, its time to get food back into production since we have inevitable economic hard times a-comin' with book-following Marxists running things. We're going to be eating lots of cow peas again, since we love 'em, they grow vigorously, produce a lot, and are exceptionally healthy. I'll post a little more here at BG as the outside activities pick up.

This past weekend Caleb and I joined our church for a father and son campout. It was a great time, largely an excuse for many of us to fish, camp, ride fourwheelers at breakneck speeds, and do all the manly stuff that causes our wives to stress out. Caleb has a nice write up of the various activities and a post with more pics. His summary best describes the great fun we had:

It was an interesting experience with a cold night, smoke in your face, a broken chain on the 4 Wheeler, snakes, scorpions, nosebleeds, and theological debates over the Chupacabra. But I would definitely do it again!

Looking back on my Boy Scout camping days, I'd do this 10 to 1 with friends and family over any scout camp experience I ever had. Here are some photos out of the hundreds I took, most of them were firearms photos since that's the fun part to me.

4 wheeling fun	Shooting rifles
Our neighbor	Caleb on day 2
I did some shooting too	Even more 4 wheeling!

Some think we're silly down here

noreply@blogger.com (Scott M. Head) — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 06:53:00 +0000

Imagine - you are checking Facebook while enjoying a pleasant day when your friends across the city start updating their status. You shake your head in disbelief, for they are making claims that are astounding. Something outside is happening, something all the people in the town can see. Its on the horizon, its coming down all around them, its a natural phenomenon of epic proportions. Yes, a volcano has erupted in our fair city and all have gone outside to watch!

Well, OK, so it isn't a volcanic eruption in the fair city of Houston, but it did snow yesterday, and that's just about as rare an event.

24 hours ago we were making snowmen and snowballs and gawking in wonder at the winter wonderland. It snowed for several hours and officially our area here on the southeast side of town received 2 inches. No one saw it coming, and what a pleasant surprise.

Of course, its going to be 70 degrees this weekend again, and all the snow was virtually gone by morning, but we had fun!

Tagged

noreply@blogger.com (Scott M. Head) — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 02:43:00 +0000

I was tagged by my son to do this "six random things" meme. I love these things!
Rules:

Link to the person who tagged you
Post these rules on your blog
Write six random things about yourself
Tag a few people
Let each person know that they have been tagged
Let the tagger know when your entry is up

So, here are my Six Random Things About Me:

My vintage: I am old enough to remember when there were no personal computers, internet, cable TV, microwaves or VCRs.
Vermin I have known: I have been bitten by water moccasins, a muskrat, scratched by an armadillo, and stung by stingrays.
Political sandpaper: I don't like the direction the nation is heading at all and have been known to rant about leftists, socialists, democrats, Marxists, and other misguided, futile ideologies that have never worked well for anyone who has tried them.
Bookworm: I enjoy reading a lot, usually books by guys who are dead. Not many people can think straight these days, let alone assemble words in a meaningful manner.
Chicks dig skills: I can weld, navigate by compass, hit a 6" target a half mile away, and develop film.
Indentured servitude: I have worked as a janitor, package pickup guy, record store clerk, credit desk guy, production grunt, shop hand, compressor repair guy, graphic designer, exhibit designer, art director, creative director and Samsonite Gorilla.

My son already tagged all the people I would tag, so I will not hassle anyone else with the tagging thing. As my son predicted, this was a good reason to post!

After Ike

noreply@blogger.com (Scott M. Head) — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 04:21:00 +0000

Thankfully, hurricane Ike has passed through and left us in good shape. Sadly, many of our neighbors further south in Galveston, and east on the bay are in dire condition. Many of the coastal places I have mentioned in this blog are no longer there. As the news comes in, if one can see beyond the grandstanding of politicians, the picture is pretty bleak in many areas.

That day will be remembered for a long time. 38 miles further inland, we sat through the storm in my in-law's house since my zip code was in a mandatory evacuation zone. We're under curfew here from dusk to dawn, but our power is on after a few surges during the day. The boards are down off the windows and most of the yard is cleaned up. The after-action photo is happily not dramatic, just some downed branches in my tree and a lot of missing leaves on the trees behind us. We lost our fence in the back and on the sides. We also lost a lot of shingles and will probably need a new roof or a fairly extensive repair. We sustained 100 mph winds here with gusts a little more according to the radio that reported official wind speeds at Hobby Airport and Ellington Field. We were in the eye wall for an hour and a half or so since we didn't get the eye directly, it began a dramatic sweep north eastward just as the eye was moving over Clear Lake. It was an anxious night, but compared to what I remember about Hurricane Alicia, a similar strength hurricane but a smaller and more compact storm, Ike was very different. While I recall Alicia being a steady howl and rumble like a freight train, Ike was a more temperamental storm full of pounding gusts that came out of nowhere.

Here's the non-dramatic "after-Ike" photo.

During the day of the storm, we left the house at noon and were at our inlaw's by noon fifteen. We watched the news, ate a fantastic meal, and watched the sky present a marvelous salmon glow as the sun went down. Winds were already high and the storm surge had already overtaken much of Galveston. While we were watching the waves crash into all of our favorite places along the seawall on TV, we witnessed the 61st street fishing pier collapse among the huge waves.

Sadly, Galveston Island is going to be uninhabitable for a while by all but the most dogged self-reliant people, and even then they are risking disease and unsanitary conditions. Bolivar peninsula is said to be 90 percent destroyed and the land itself is greatly reshaped. Rollover pass was scoured and the bridge over the pass washed out. The west end of Galveston Island suffered greatly and all of Galveston proper was flooded by storm surge to withing six blocks of the sea wall. The old landmark piers and old gambling houses over the surf are gone, and rubble and debris are everywhere. We have not heard what has become of Seawolf Park or Pelican Island. We know they were underwater. We saw raw video feed from a flyover of both Bolivar and San Luis Pass - the pass beaches are much reshaped, the pass channels will have certainly been re-cut. The west end of the island, where developers have virtually ruined a pristine barrier island, is a wreck. Galveston Island will be recovering for a very long time.

Currently the news about what is really going on in the hardest hit places is carefully guarded by the authorities who are acting as if the only hope is government management. There is a degree of need for the government here, since the infrastructure is ruined and disease is a real threat. Yet news is scarce. The majority of the information about Galveston and Bolivar are stories about the FEMA efforts to feed and move everyone, the messianic government coming to save people, and politicians speaking promises and saying little of any great value. Real news is parsed out over time as it becomes "necessary" to inform, such as what is going on with the water, natural gas, and sewage systems. The real news is out there if one searches the internet carefully enough, and is bleak. Real news would keep more people away from the island and safe, I believe, than some grandstanding congress person who 'encourages you not to come to the island yet'.

Getting ready for Ike

noreply@blogger.com (Scott M. Head) — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 23:09:00 +0000

Here is the home place on the Thursday prior to us leaving for higher ground, I'm boarding up today. I figured I'd do a before and after pic, hopefully it will not be dramatic. Who knows when power will be back on. You locals stay safe!

Adventures in Satellite Dish Installation

noreply@blogger.com (Scott M. Head) — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 16:39:00 +0000

I've threatened to pull it down, but certain members of my family have warned me that if I discontinue Black Gumbo I will be considered an outcast from familial society and written out of wills. Well, not really, but still.

I get it, I need to post more.

So the "sorta-family-adventure, sometimes gardening, occasional fishing report, boring to anyone but me pictures, bird reports that are only interesting to one guy in the local Audubon Society who probably doesn't have a computer" blog is going to have to have some more activity.

So let me tell you a story about satellite dish installation. That's sure to be exciting, right? Well, we decided to install this satellite dish system to pipe in school courses to our house for our home schooling efforts this year. Because we have a new baby in the house, this sort of curriculum will work out well for us this year since it takes a very large burden off of Angie. We went to the homeschool conference in June and listened to the guy pitch the service and cut us a good deal. We previewed the course DVDs and our kids enjoyed it, so it seemed all was well in the family school plans for the year.

Sounds great, sign me up!

A few weeks later the box arrived. Since I am known for my promptness and ambition, I put off installation until a mere week before we were to start receiving signals from outer space through our fine new dish, figuring "Baahhh, its a satellite dish, how hard can it be?". So time passed, and all of a sudden I had to put up the dish. Here's how it played out:

June - Settle on satellite service as our best option for the year

July - Buy service, wonder why they cut us such a great deal

July 20ish - dish arrives

Late July - discover satellite service is discontinued after this year, realize why they cut us such a great deal

Early August - Consider options, figure for the price, we can do the year and evaluate options for next year.

Last Saturday, evening-ish - Open big box, investigate contents, locate manual, read manual.

Saturday, late night - go outside and investigate existing dish mount, realize the old, unused Dish Network dish mount points the wrong way, is too small, and won't work. Figure out way to tell wife that my grand plan of recycling the old dish mount to save time won't work because my emphatic declaration that "Satellites are generally in the same area of the sky, southward" did not consider the fact that there is a giant 2 story house due south.

Saturday, later at night - get compass, survey back yard for a location for new pole mount. Find spot between trees and neighbor's house with a narrow slot peeking to where the satellite is supposed to be. Shove stick in ground to mark the spot.

Saturday, very late at night - make shopping list for Home Depot to include a pole, cement and magnetic level. Call friend to borrow post hole digger.

Sunday, 3pm after church - arrive home to dig hole, fight with leaking gasoline post hole digger for an hour, apply Neosporin to blistered hands. Finally get post hole digger started. Start hole, get to famous black gumbo clay 8 inches down and stall. Wrestle machine loose, re-start, slowly try to shave off little pieces of clay as the auger digs in.

Sunday 4pm - Successfully finish digging hole with gas powered auger that would have taken 15 minutes with a shovel.

Sunday 4:30pm - prepare pole, haul cement to back yard on wheelbarrow with flat tire.

Sunday 5pm - set pole, pour cement, rejoice. Pole needs to "set up" for a day, according to instructions. Call boss, get day off work to finish job.

Monday evening - re-read instructions, assemble dish parts, realize dish nuts and bolts are metric sized and my socket set in not. Dig through tool box for crescent wrenches.

Tuesday 10am - Optimistically set out to mount dish to pole, drag stuff out back, run extension cord, haul TV and receiver out to back yard to find signal.

Tuesday 11am - Dish properly installed on pole, that pole is a thing of beauty, perfectly set, perfectly plumb, fits like a glove. Well done.

Tuesday 11:30am - Connections made, power up, start aligning dish to satellite. Manual says 171 degrees at 55.1 degrees elevation. No problem, I'm an Eagle Scout and can read a compass.

Tuesday 12pm - Still searching for signal

Tuesday 12:30pm - Still searching for signal

Tuesday 1pm - Still searching for signal

Tuesday 1:30pm - Still searching for signal, checking compass to see where it was made.

Tuesday 2pm - Found a satellite, but not the right one. Beginning to worry a bit.

Tuesday 2:30pm - Lovely wife comes outside to hand over a paper she "didn't remember was in the packet" that I might find useful. Paper says service is on a new satellite, here are your new coordinates. Wife goes inside quickly.

Tuesday 2:35pm - Encouraged that now I will be successful, I shoot a new azimuth and notice trees in my line of sight.

Tuesday 3pm - Searching for signal on new coordinates, thinking the trees are just barely able to be missed.

Tuesday 3:30pm - Searching for signal

Tuesday 4pm - Searching for signal

Tuesday 4:30pm - Searching for signal, coming to terms with the inevitable solution regarding trees.

Tuesday 5pm - Head to garage to get saw

Tuesday 5:30pm - Saw off major branches of tree.

Tuesday 6pm - Saw off major branches of tree.

Tuesday 6:30pm - Searching for signal

Tuesday 7pm - Searching for signal

Tuesday 8pm - Give up. Must be the trees. Consider abandoning pole, dig roof mounting equipment out of trash.

Tuesday 11pm - Inform boss that I will need another day off.

Wednesday, 8am - Assemble tools for roof install, read manual, wait for tech support guy to become available.

Wednesday, 9am - Call tech support guy, discuss problem. Tech guy says, "Oh yeah, that's the wrong coordinates". I say "huh?". He says "Yeah, that's a general number, give me your zip code and I'll get you the righ ones." Gee, thanks. I wondered then why they don't publish the coordinates someplace like the web, after all, its the 21st century.

Wednesday, 9:30am - Shoot 3rd new set of numbers on compass. See clear line of sight to where the Galaxy 26 satellite is supposed to be. Encouraged, but skeptical.

Wednesday, 9:31am - Signal loud and clear.

Wednesday, 10am Hook up dish to main line, run cable through hole, plug in to receiver in house, and bingo. Working service.

So, there's an adventure for you. Anyone want some quality, 14 year old Bradford Pear wood?