Shane Carpenter

Thank goodness.

a cartoon of snoopy and woodstock celebrating a birthday with a cake ALT: a cartoon of snoopy and woodstock celebrating a birthday with a cake

Happy Birthday!

We need to do a serious rethink of healthcare in this country. Of course, doing serious things seems to be a thing of the past.

I hope it's not United Healthcare.

This year I'm growing my green tomato, Saucy Mary. I picked the first couple today. Wow! I have been missing out.

I've heard people say how good green tomatoes are, but I've been nervous about growing them myself. In the future, I will always have at least one green tomato variety in the garden.

I’m sorry you have to deal with all of this. Our healthcare system is not the best.

From the picture I would guess a cantaloupe.

I'm not going to be able to make it today. It's been a week full of the unexpected. I lost Monday and Tuesday, most of yesterday, and I'll lose part of today. I'm behind on everything and need to catch up in the worst way. I'll have to check in later to see what I missed. #FreelanceFriends

I'm hoping to get enough so I can make Cherry Tomato Pesto. Of course, I eat them as fast as they ripen, so...

Tempted by "marketing formulas" promising instant, massive results? While they sound great, they often miss the mark. 



What works for one company won't automatically work for yours. Steer clear of one-size-fits-all solutions and find the right strategy tailored to your needs.

Once again, it's pluerry season! 😋 🎉

I get that they are trying to do the retro thing but the new Fantastic 4 movie looks like a campy 60s movie that Ed Wood would have directed.

My Blue Yeti microphone only works with Audacity. With every other program, I get a horrible screeching sound. This is absolutely bizarre.

Eagle Smiley, Rosella, tTopical Sunset, Purple Bumblebee, Sungold, and Black Cherry.

It keeps the foliage off the ground to help prevent soil borne disease. It also helps with air flow.

The idea of planting tomatoes horizontally is that it will make the plant stronger because it will form roots on the buried part of the stem. I've never tried it. I just dig a deeper hole in the ground, but it would make sense to do it that way in pot to maximize the root system.

The screaming you heard in the distance? That was me. It's been one of those days, but I think I'm past it now.

I was going to write some fiction yesterday until I realized that I had the idea and the plot but hadn't done work on the characters. Instead of writing fiction, I wrote character bios.

Another reason why I'm not particularly fond of Grammarly.

I'd give it a shot. I had a volunteer last year in a flower bed. I moved it to a pot because I didn't have any room in the garden beds. It ended up being a cherry tomato, variety unknown. I got 15-20 tomatoes off of it.

Has anybody else run into a situation where Grammarly is giving gibberish for writing suggestions?

Darn squirrels. I've heard the advice to pick tomatoes at the breaker stage. I don't know if that will make a difference to the squirrels or not but it might be worth exploring.

Saucy Mary is the tomato that I'm most interested in tasting. Funny that it wasn't originally part of the grow plan this year.

Saucy Mary is a green tomato with dark green stripes. It was thrown in as a gift when I was sent some other seeds so I figured I'd grow it and see how it did. The Gloria's Treat that I picked today is really good. To my taste buds, it had a nice balance between tart and sweet.

The new varieties I'm trying this year are:

Sun Gold
Eagle Smiley
Indian Stripe
Cherokee Chocolate
Speckled Roman
Giant Heart Climber
Big Rainbow
Dester
Earl
Choemato
Gloria's Treat
BrandyFred
Sonrojo Monster
Sweet Scarlett
Boronia
Saucy Mary

My first full size tomato of the year came from one of my dwarf plants. This is Gloria’s Treat.

That sucks. I don't have a problem with any of the animals or insects unless they impact the garden.

It was gardening and reading for me. Might be boring to some but it felt good.

The people in this group are hardcore into tomatoes. Some of them are growing 100-150 plants. I don't know how they do it. But, they are really nice, happy to share seeds, and help troubleshoot problems.

I've seen another method where they use a cage along with staking the main and leader stems. If you do that you'd want to be good about pruning the suckers so the plant doesn't grow out of control. The con would be that you have to stay on top of it, which would be time-consuming.