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great successes
May. 23rd, 2026 01:23 pmsuccesses is a terrible word to type out.
Thursday, I planted tomatoes and peppers into our vegetable beds by myself. Black biodegradable mulch. Fantastic stuff. At the end of the season, we simply plow it under and it degrades. It's made of corn or something. I love it so much. All the benefits of black plastic mulch with so much less of the downsides of having to pull it up at the end of the season. Certified organic farms can't use it, so sucks to be them and it is thinner than conventional black plastic so it'll rip more. But it's amazing. Anyway.
I ordered trays of plants from KubePak, a greenhouse in NJ. We don't have the starting space for the number of trays we need for all the plants, so we order from them. (I have a someday dream of building a 20x20 greenhouse because it could be heated by our woodburning stove. But the only good spot would be near the road where we park our rolling selling thingy, so it would be nice if it had a little selling area attached and it could be a year round little store....anyway, we don't have a lot of seed starting space) It can be pricey, but their plant quality is top tier and they have decent options for commercial growers. In case the gardeners are curious about our mix of plants, I ordered:
6 50count trays of Mariana (plum/paste tomato)
2 50 count trays of La Roma (plum/paste tomato)
1 50 count tray of Biltmore (slicer tomato)
1 50 count tray of Amish paste (big paste tomato, experiment)
3 50 count trays of Revolution II (green bell pepper)
1 50 count tray of Jalapenos
1 50 count tray of Carmen (Italian stuffing pepper)
1 105 count tray of Barbarella (Italian eggplant)
Plus, I had four trays of tomatoes and peppers that I seeded in smaller amounts (5-15 plants) and a tray of herbs. I started typing it all out but it's a lot of different varieties. The reasoning is that some folks like to use the other varieties since they have much better flavor for more fresh use. It's nice to have a bunch of different colors of tomato and also some weird varieties like Costoluto Genovese and Black Krim. For peppers, I seed some extra hot peppers and a bunch of different shape sweet peppers. I tried two more eggplant varieties and some tomatillos. Herbs are basil, dill, cilantro and parsley.
I planted the tomatoes all in before lunch and the peppers, eggplants and herbs after lunch, plus using the plastic push planter to seed one bed of green beans, 20 ft sections of purple and yellow wax beans and shell and snap peas. We ended up with about 120 extra feet in the tomato block so I might seed in some more for funsies. I've got more herbs to seed in as well since I'm doing a couple plantings of those.
In total, around 1000 plants. I was extremely sore by the end of the day and the next morning, but my little stretching routines seems to help a lot.
Friday, I organized a cookout. Jade is away tonight, so my original plan was to do it tonight, but given the weather today, I'm glad I changed it. On Monday, I texted the extended local family that we were having a cookout Friday night, 5:30ish, I'd have hot dogs, buns and smores fixings and they should all bring something if they wanted. We set up in the pavilion behind the church, I forked picnic tables out around the firepits that we set up. I brought over all the food and camp chairs around 4:45, got the fire going at 5 and was cooking my first cheese kielbasa over the fire by 5:30.
It was solid, everyone brought a ton of food including gluten free snickerdoodles which were delicious! I think my great aunt brought they specially for me which was very nice. My aunt brought her gluten free brownie recipe which is not very good but I eat one anyway and regret it. It has almond flour in it and you can tell. The grocery store now carries gluten free graham crackers so I finally had proper smores instead of my usual which is two pieces of chocolate sandwiching a marshmallow.
I ate so much food, hung out and then cleaned up and was out of there and back to the house by 10pm. Solid. Very good party, very pleased with how it went. Currently basking in "I'm a good party host" and I have lots of food to eat including so much fruit.
This morning I slept in so hard. It was so nice. The rain started overnight, so not much tractor work to be done. I'm somewhat working today, doing some computer work research and then drywall in the upstairs bathroom. I think I'm finally going to start spackling!
My mom was going to an estate sale and invited me along which was good because she would have bailed without me. Estate sales in this area are packed, so many people go to them. We picked up lots of useful tool stuff, snow shovels, jumper cables, hammers and other small things for a total of $36. Excellent.
I got some plying of old samples done over the last few days since I need to free up storage bobbins, so that's been going well. I finally remembered to make center pull balls instead of winding plying bracelets so I don't need to be attached to the yarn for so long. But it takes longer to wind, so sometimes I still do the plying bracelet. I don't own a center pull ball winder, so I just use a tube and wind it on that.
Thursday, I planted tomatoes and peppers into our vegetable beds by myself. Black biodegradable mulch. Fantastic stuff. At the end of the season, we simply plow it under and it degrades. It's made of corn or something. I love it so much. All the benefits of black plastic mulch with so much less of the downsides of having to pull it up at the end of the season. Certified organic farms can't use it, so sucks to be them and it is thinner than conventional black plastic so it'll rip more. But it's amazing. Anyway.
I ordered trays of plants from KubePak, a greenhouse in NJ. We don't have the starting space for the number of trays we need for all the plants, so we order from them. (I have a someday dream of building a 20x20 greenhouse because it could be heated by our woodburning stove. But the only good spot would be near the road where we park our rolling selling thingy, so it would be nice if it had a little selling area attached and it could be a year round little store....anyway, we don't have a lot of seed starting space) It can be pricey, but their plant quality is top tier and they have decent options for commercial growers. In case the gardeners are curious about our mix of plants, I ordered:
6 50count trays of Mariana (plum/paste tomato)
2 50 count trays of La Roma (plum/paste tomato)
1 50 count tray of Biltmore (slicer tomato)
1 50 count tray of Amish paste (big paste tomato, experiment)
3 50 count trays of Revolution II (green bell pepper)
1 50 count tray of Jalapenos
1 50 count tray of Carmen (Italian stuffing pepper)
1 105 count tray of Barbarella (Italian eggplant)
Plus, I had four trays of tomatoes and peppers that I seeded in smaller amounts (5-15 plants) and a tray of herbs. I started typing it all out but it's a lot of different varieties. The reasoning is that some folks like to use the other varieties since they have much better flavor for more fresh use. It's nice to have a bunch of different colors of tomato and also some weird varieties like Costoluto Genovese and Black Krim. For peppers, I seed some extra hot peppers and a bunch of different shape sweet peppers. I tried two more eggplant varieties and some tomatillos. Herbs are basil, dill, cilantro and parsley.
I planted the tomatoes all in before lunch and the peppers, eggplants and herbs after lunch, plus using the plastic push planter to seed one bed of green beans, 20 ft sections of purple and yellow wax beans and shell and snap peas. We ended up with about 120 extra feet in the tomato block so I might seed in some more for funsies. I've got more herbs to seed in as well since I'm doing a couple plantings of those.
In total, around 1000 plants. I was extremely sore by the end of the day and the next morning, but my little stretching routines seems to help a lot.
Friday, I organized a cookout. Jade is away tonight, so my original plan was to do it tonight, but given the weather today, I'm glad I changed it. On Monday, I texted the extended local family that we were having a cookout Friday night, 5:30ish, I'd have hot dogs, buns and smores fixings and they should all bring something if they wanted. We set up in the pavilion behind the church, I forked picnic tables out around the firepits that we set up. I brought over all the food and camp chairs around 4:45, got the fire going at 5 and was cooking my first cheese kielbasa over the fire by 5:30.
It was solid, everyone brought a ton of food including gluten free snickerdoodles which were delicious! I think my great aunt brought they specially for me which was very nice. My aunt brought her gluten free brownie recipe which is not very good but I eat one anyway and regret it. It has almond flour in it and you can tell. The grocery store now carries gluten free graham crackers so I finally had proper smores instead of my usual which is two pieces of chocolate sandwiching a marshmallow.
I ate so much food, hung out and then cleaned up and was out of there and back to the house by 10pm. Solid. Very good party, very pleased with how it went. Currently basking in "I'm a good party host" and I have lots of food to eat including so much fruit.
This morning I slept in so hard. It was so nice. The rain started overnight, so not much tractor work to be done. I'm somewhat working today, doing some computer work research and then drywall in the upstairs bathroom. I think I'm finally going to start spackling!
My mom was going to an estate sale and invited me along which was good because she would have bailed without me. Estate sales in this area are packed, so many people go to them. We picked up lots of useful tool stuff, snow shovels, jumper cables, hammers and other small things for a total of $36. Excellent.
I got some plying of old samples done over the last few days since I need to free up storage bobbins, so that's been going well. I finally remembered to make center pull balls instead of winding plying bracelets so I don't need to be attached to the yarn for so long. But it takes longer to wind, so sometimes I still do the plying bracelet. I don't own a center pull ball winder, so I just use a tube and wind it on that.
