Evil Weed Tree

Hi all! I really need help identifying this thing. It's cropping up everywhere in my landlady's yard.

The major one is along a fence - It's nearly 20 feet tall! A 12-footer is about 3 feet away. One smaller one appears 10 feet away from the main, and it's growing from my house foundation. I keep it hacked back, but it keeps on coming. This guy is infected with woolly aphids, too. :(

There are 2 more about 20 feet along the fence - the landscape guy keeps cutting them back, but they are up to 4 feet or better within weeks. Dozens of small ones are growing out from under the patio and into the back yard - this is on the exact opposite side of my house from the woolly aphid-infested one.

The leaves are lobes and soft - not shiny. They're broad - the largest ones are much bigger than my hand. The edges of the leaves are serrated, but still very soft.

The stems are extremely woody, and it's much more like a tree. It is extremely heat and drought tolerant.

It's evil and won't go away! Need ID to locate best control methods.

Newfangledness and lettuce.

Well, hi all!

This is a photo of my new lettuce and garlic bin! Pretty tasty looking, huh? I planted some lovely heirloom garlic cloves, then scattered seeds over the top. I have a mixed sweet greens & reds, Paris mesclun mix, an Asian mesclun that's good for stir-fries, and spicy micro greens. YUM! Yes, they're planted thickly. I figured I'd just thin right into my salad bowl, which is working great so far!

Unfortunately, the dreaded cabbage moth has visited. It's a pretty little white butterfly. It lays zillions of eggs on your greens. The eggs hatch and hungry little monster-pillars come out and munchmunchmunch. I've resorted to the BT again. *sigh*

Here's a shot of the intro to my garden:



Yeah, I know. It looks white trash-tastic. But it works. Here's the second half:




I've cleaned up since this photo, and put in another lettuce and garlic bin (with the wilting lettuce needed to be transplanted from the earlier photo). I've also destroyed both the grow-outs of the Purple Haze tester. I'm about half a second away from doing the same on the Power's Heirloom, since it has not once set fruit.

The black prince and black plum are producing nicely. Hopefully, they will ripen before any frost. Unfortunately, those don't taste as great as I'd like them to. The first black prince (picked and eaten in a lovely salad November 2nd) actually tasted kind of lame. It thought about tasting like a tomato, honestly, but I'd already swallowed by then. However, it was far better than the atrocious excuse for a tomato that was on a sandwich I bought today. If I'm paying $6.95 for a tomato-basil-mozzerella panini, shouldn't the tomato be amazing? I mean, it's only 33% of the sandwich ingredients. At an expensive bakery, no less. Actually, the basil was tough and lackluster, too. I need a panini press...

What I'm finding is that I'm excited by the thought of a tomato. That is, until I get a tomato that I didn't grow, or I didn't get from a market myself. Food service tomatoes are SHIT. No wonder I spent my early life thinking I hated tomatoes! I *do* hate tomatoes, at least the readily available ones! A real, flavorful, juicy heirloom tomato? Now that's where it's at! Some restaurants have the tomato thing took care of: P.F. Chang's, Claim Jumper, Twist in Atlanta... but they are few and far between. We need more tomato lovers!!!

Which brings me to this: I have begun a new blog. A Southerner's Guide to (surviving) Los Angeles. In it, I will detail the search for Southernness in the greater L.A. area. Good food and recipes and locales, hoo-ah! Come on over!

How I skipped September and the Two Hundred Dollar tomatoes I ought to have skipped.

Yeesh. Bit of a gap since last post, sorry. Life happened!

I now have a new car. I've already had a collision in the new car. I've already had to take the same car to the shop for non-collision issues. I've come well along on Tuesday and the Moon. I've had my debit information stolen and my checking acccount cleaned out. I've rescued a cat that i now want to keep. I've had an interesting few weeks.

So, yeah.

The tomatoes... yeah, they're nuts. I started building homemade sub-irrigated planters that are like the EarthBox brand, only better and cheaper. The idea is to water once or twice a week, and the plants take what they need. It's lower impact, There's some directions for making your own here and here. Making your own is cheaper than buying the real thing, not that I'm knocking Earthboxes at all! Great product! But I am broke as phuc, and what I've grown this year would have cost me $500 just for the boxes (they're $50 each), and that's not half what I'd like to grow. Plus, Earthboxes are shallow, and I grow indeterminate tomatoes. They need DEEP dirt, so making my own was the only way to go. I can make the equivalent of 2 Earthboxes in growing space for less than $8, so what's the poor waitress going to choose? $100 or $8?

So anyway, I've been trying like hell to grow. I should photograph the cemetery of dead smaller pots that just couldn't stay watered in the California heat, or else suffered from damping off. I started some twelve varieties. The first installments of the saga can be found here and here.

So the ones that I thought would live did not. I have five survivors: Black plum, black prince, power's heirloom (which was a freebie. I didn't even order the damn seeds.), the San Marzano from the nursery, and one testing out of a Purple Haze to see where the hybrid falls. Not one has actually produced a usable fruit. Only 3 have set fruit at all!

The costoluto genovese and 2nd jaune flamme did not survive transplant. (the first jaune flamme was light years ahead of the other seedlings until transplant when it promptly gave me the middle finger and didn't grow an inch. It was then destroyed in the caterpillarpocalypse.) The Dona, hawaiian currant replacement, and 2nd san marzano did not survive the 2nd heat wave.

Then, the caterpillars hit. I didn't know that the little black sandy specks everywhere were caterpillar poo. They decimated everything. My first 3 tomatoes had caterpillars in them as well as splits. They were useless. So I waged Caterpillar Armageddon right after they dropped the caterpillarpocalypse on me. I did what the web told me which was cut the 'pillars with scissors if I found them. The ensuing green goo-splosion has put me off avocadoes indefinitely. I much prefer a weekly dose of BT, which is a bacteria that kills them, but not other bugs, birds, cats, etc. I didn't have time to order the flies that destroy the caterpillars. Desperate measures were needed. i took care of them, and then, BAM! Blossom end rot on the San Marzano. Goddammit...

As it stands right now, if my 2 likeliest tomatoes actually make it, then they will have cost $200 each. Not tomato plants. Actual tomatoes. Those fuckers better taste good. I hope to put them in the 90-day novel potluck later in the month, which gives them about 4 weeks to mature. I am hopeful. They'd make pretty caprese salads.

I'm not alone. most other California gardeners have reported weird-as-hell growing issues. Pollinators coming too early,

Other casualties: 4 dead eggplants, 2 clinging to life with no fruit. One habanero of six survives and is just beginning to bear. All other peppers (some 40 of them!) dead. Three shrimpy jalapeno peppers less than one inch long got produced before that plant keeled over. Garlic? What garlic? New thyme plant is dead, have bought another. Not one parsley, cilantro, oregano, sage, or marjoram made it. Only thyme and rosemary from nurseries did make it, all my from seed ones died. All six okra bit the dust. All turnips and carrots went buh-bye. No calendulas survived. Hell, even the Borage is dying without flowers.

I hope to make planters every couple of weeks over the course of the winter to add to the 5 I have, plus 2 of the 5-gallon bucket variety. This way, I won't have to muck about with trying to maintain all the little pots. Instead, I'll get them in the self-waterers ASAP. I'll start 'em, sprout 'em, transplant 'emm young, and thin 'em later if necessary. Getting the plants in regular watering and protected from the heat is the hard part here. 80% of my tomato survivors were from seed, and over 95% of my plant costs were in tomato plants that didn't make it. I won't do that again, but I'll use my certificate for my 2 free plants next year. The plant pickup location is near the L.A. location of Penzey's Spices, so I'll consolidate and hit Little India on my way back. Make a day of it outside of damn tomatoes. I might buy 2 more just for the hell of it, but I don't believe that the plants were tempered for my area. We'll see. But I'll definitely combat my late start.

What I did right: BASIL. That shit goes nuts in self-watering planters! the photo is of my recent prevent-the-bolt cutbacks, because when basils go to seed, they lose flavor. I have several varieties that are doing extremely well, and I have cut them back multiple times. I will make my caprese salads for the potluck, and then let some go to seed. I'll try to catch seed for the first time ever! I am loving the purple basils (dark opal, purple ruffles, and purple petra) and having fun making basil vinegars, oils, and pestos. I made an amazing Thai pesto by mixing garlic and equal parts thai basil, cilantro, and mint. I used olive oil, but next time I'll use some sesame oil. White pepper instead of black. YUM! I'll skip the African blue basil next time, though. It is thick and fuzzy. Not a great texture. It's also a hybrid, so I can't save seed.

So, next is garlic and lettuces. Another shot at turnips and carrots. Keep the 'maters going until they keel over. Keep the basils going until they poop out or until the temperatures drop (IF they drop, that is).

I sleep now.

And so it begins...

So, we're starting to actually write this week somewhat. We were outlining, and now we're writing. Tuesday and the Moon has become steampunk. Yay! Or, Gah! At any rate, I write. One day, you read!

We're not supposed to talk about this too much, so I'll change the subject.

I have one almost-ripe tomato. YAY! I can't seem to get the others to pollinate worth a damn. The homemade self-watering containers are working very well, but I need to make more. The plants that were tiny are now BIG. They need more space.

Oh, and I'm sick of being broke, but when is that news?

Send me love and good thoughts!

I have been promoted!

I am now no longer the Goddess of Tomato Death!!! I am now the Goddess of Tomato Mediocrity!

Yeah, some promotion.

The baby hawaiian currant keeled over, so I'm now relying on the highly heat-stressed one to bear fruit. It probably won't bear much. One sweet pea currant seedling is alive, but not growing. Period. Damn.

I found a caterpillar curled up inside a jalapeno. He had already killed another one. He went in the trash bin. Wonder if this is the culprit who's been munching my lettuce. He's gone now, but I might need to take action...

I created 4 self-watering containers which have been populated with seeds and seedlings, so we'll see how they do. Unfortunately, I've had to move everything to the far less sunny side of the house. :( I'll be upgrading container size on a few seedlings to try to get them to grow. I need to buy a ruler, just in case I'm not noticing that they ARE growing.

Been using a lot of Great Big Plants and Neptune's Harvest fertilizers as foliar sprays. We'll see if they help. I've also been watering with the water from my turtle aquarium, but now that I'm using the self-waterers, that would be a bad idea to continue. Now I'll have to try building a greywater filtering system, maybe similar to a folkewall. Not sure that'll work in our current housing setup, but we'll see.

I'll work on some photos soon!

I am the Goddess of Tomato Death!

Seriously.

I order tomato plants. I go to my friend's wedding. I come back, and it was 105 degrees while I was gone. Tomato plants dead. Crispy. Yuck. Lost a billion seedlings, too. Despite eight separate plantings, not one calendula has survived. The Gods of face cream are rebelling. They don't want me to have this pretty stuff on my face so that my face will become a mite prettier. Bastards. My tarragon is gone! NOOOOOOOO! Took me eight months to find the damn thing to buy it (French Tarragon does not grow from seed. Gotta buy a plant)!

I sigh, start up more plantings (since ten of twelve tomato varieties are now deceased), and look for mature plants again, since I've now lost three to four growing months.

I order a few more plants from the same place, and drive all the way down to bloody Lomita to pick them up. This is the week that gas almost breaks the $5/gallon barrier. And it's at the other end of L.A. from me. Down the 405. Dear god, NO!

But I go. I buy plants. I transplant all of them. I make it back alive (barely). I buy locally several mints, a new tarragon, some lemon verbena, and rosemary.

Within 48 hours, the temperatures reach 116 degrees. I am away from my plants for 4.5 hours. They are crispy fried when I get back. All of the mint leaves are dry. All of them. The rosemary is black, the tarragon is brown.

The San Marzano isn't recovering well. The Black Plum is desperately trying to sprout new leaves, but I have more coming up, just in case. The Dona was much shorter and less leggy. It lost one big leaf, then another. It just might make it. The Hawaiian Currant is sprouting a few new leaves and some blossoms as well, but it's likely too stressed to fruit well. I'm just glad the new Sweet Pea Currant and Golden Grape varieties hadn't sprouted yet, so were therefore inside and not dead.

But still, I've managed to kill the cayenne pepper plant. Heck, every pepper plant I've started is dead. I just bought a 6-pack of habanero, just in case, and will return for jalapeno, poblano, and ornamentals. My seeds keep dying around week 4, and I don't have time to keep fooling around. Planting #4 of the rainbow bell pepper variety is also kaput, just like 1-3. #5 is at first-leaf stage. I'm not holding my breath.

Next year, I start in January, and I hope to hell I'm not living in the valley by then.

Still here, exhausted and busy!

Getting off my ass now. I promise!

Since last post:

Learned to loathe LAX. A LOT. Not as much as if I'd been flying out on Airtran, tho. That particular terminal really blows. I got spoiled when I lived in Atlanta, because the airport makes sense and has a wide variety of excellent food options. At LAX, you are screwed!

All tomatoes? Dead. Tarragon? Dead. Most of herbs? Dead. Thanks a lot, random 105-degree heat followed by 45-degree nights. Yeesh. I lost over $75 worth of plants and WEEKS of work. That mint I've been nursing for 8 months? GONE. But the garlic is doing well (in the wrong place)!

Turtles are huge! more than 3 times their original size, and still growing! Lorenzo got put back in his teeny bowl for fighting with the turtles. Dude, they're TURTLES. they have snappy beaks! no wonder you're missing scales! relax!!

Ran into 2 old pals online that I missed a lot: Greg (from elementary school! WAY old history, and glad to have him back in my life) and Richard (from GA Renaissance Festival). Also caught up to Brenda, Nita, Eric, & Calvin from high school. I also found out that 2 of my old high school pals Heather and Andy just got married!

Further developed some of the stickier points in Tuesday and The Moon. Realized while talking to Hilary (Pingle. awesome actress pal from work. rising star, dawgs!) that I have GOT to get cracking. In order for people to test-read Tuesday by October, I need to have a first draft done in the next 6 weeks or so! GAH!!! Gabriel got a new job (YAY!), and is taking a trip to celebrate, so I'll have a week of being bored that will be excellent time to write. Wait, did I say bored? I'll have a car in L.A. for a week.... I could create a LOT of havoc. Of course, I probably shouldn't write that in my blog, because he might be suspicious at 8000 new miles on his car in a week... ;) Just kidding, baby, I'll be good! Truth be told, I probably won't go very far at all. Maybe to Chick-Fil-A. Which reminds me...

McDonald's now has sweet tea nationwide to go along with their southern style chicken biscuit and sandwich. The sandwich features 2 pickles. Cap on Chick-Fil-A much, assholes? Get your own damn idea! and keep the nationwide sweet tea forever, please! (The ONLY way this is acceptable is if the biscuits are made from scratch again like they used to be when I worked for mickeydees back in the early 90's. If these are those damn ready-mades, then I call DOUBLE whackitude. Ya heard that Ray Kroc?) OK, maybe I'm just bitter because I have to drive 30 miles if I want Chick-Fil-A. But I do it because I'm a dyed-in-the-wool Southern Gal. But I welcome sweet tea near me. I just still call shenanigans on the golden arches for their ripoff, and rightfully so.

I have refined my grit-making technique. Bought grits (roughly 8 lbs. worth) while in South Carolina for Ginny's wedding to Roo. (YAY Ginny and Roo!) While there, I also had shrimp & grits 3 times in 24 hours. Life was real tasty there for a minute. Been pining since I got back. Thank god I can cook. I make a mean fried green tomato, too! Muuuuwahahahahaha!!! When I figure out the essence of the Flying Biscuit's Side of Love recipe, I will officially dominate breakfast. I still kick ass on my biscuits, though! (all butter, no shortening. Live free!)

Tomorrow, Book Expo! Yay! I'll miss the farmer's market 3rd week running, but what the hell. I'll be able to buy fava beans next week. This week, I'll hopefully be getting killer loads of free books! Just think, me with more reading material to gloat about!

Speaking of reading, I picked up Stephenie Meyer's new title, The Host. What a unique and enthralling tale! I was captivated the way I haven't been in a long time. Gone is the fanfiction-y feel of her Twilight series novels, and present is gritty, real drama delivered beautifully. Go! Read!

Ok, I'll report back on Book Expo digs soon!