07-24-2025 — The Heat is on

Howdy all. The dry weather continues. But, the hot weather is back. Today’s porncast includes both an air quality alert and a heat alert. Yep. Real Feel temps to soar over 100 and crap in the air at the same time. And humidity too. Like walking through an active compost pile. So lovely.

But life goes on.

I did some harvesting the last few days. All of the potato beds are now empty. The plants are in the compost bins, and the potatoes have been distributed. I also pulled all of the carrots from the beds near the garage (still some by the fence). And the cucumbers. . . Oh my, so many cucumbers.

One of the multiple legged carrots. I had to dig some up after pulling by the plant was ineffective.

The last of the potato beds yielded this bounty. 3.5×3.5 foot bed.

I picked 2/3rds a five gallon bucket of cucumbers the same day. That was 19 nice sized cucumbers. Add those to the 6-8 I gave my brother, and the 10 or so I gave to my housekeeper, and that makes about 3 dozen cucumbers from just 3 plants. And there are many, many, more coming.

These 3 carrots were in yesterday’s haul. I like to call this a tribute to a Thai cathouse. You are never quite sure what you are going to see by the end of the date.

These were the carrots I harvested. I split them into a couple of canvas bags and gave them, along with the potatoes and cucumbers, to my lawn service team. They should get a little back from having to edge and trim around the various garden beds all summer.

Also got about a half pint of little tomatoes. Useful in my daily omelettes.

I took some of my bounty for a nice bed of vegetables to go under boneless, skinless, chicken thighs. As normal, I eat a little, then it all ends up in a large container as soup ingredients. Yes, this got seasoned after I put the meat on top. Just basic Italian seasoning and a pepper/garlic seasoning.

There are still carrots and some onions out in the beds. Not sure if the pepper plants will create much of a harvest this year. Will likely get another meal or two from the bean plants (they don’t look so great either). And should soon get a nice haul of tomatoes. No where near what I’ve gotten in the last 4 years, but some good eats.

The one bed by the fence that I put potatoes in this year, could have produced much more. But I had forgotten just how much of the volume of the bed was taken up by the water reservoirs in it. There was only 3 inches of soil above the water. So, I will be adding a lot more soil.

I moved the soil out of the way in the upper right to see where the water container began. I have room for a good 10 inches of soil to be added. After this picture I added 32 quarts of potting mix, and barely could see a difference. I have another 80 quarts arriving tomorrow. That should give me an idea of how much more is really needed.

Oh, my indoor activities. The 24x36 inch piece of plywood I ordered as a shelf for the 3D printer’s workbench table, arrived. I was unhappy to see, that even though it actually measure about 23.75x35.75, that it would not fit the 24x36 space. Huh? you ask. Yeah, it turns out the space is closer to 23.5 by 35.5. I will either use a jigsaw to trim the corners, or see if I can get a smaller “24x36” piece of shelf. But I didn’t have a jigsaw, and have given away my big tools. I ordered a battery jigsaw and expect it now. I would rather see something I don’t butcher under the table. I’ll update when I make progress, and can clean up the mess I’ve made of that room and can Enjoy Life.