Big Tomato Harvest!

Yesterday I got home and found Meg was watering the garden beds, using the sprinkler with well water and watering from a rain barrel by hose. I joined her with my new 2.5 gallon metal watering can using water from the 300 gallon rain tote. The rain totes both have 3/4 inch spigots so the water fills the can twice as fast as the hose(we have low water pressure) or smaller 55 gallon rain barrel. We both worked hard in the 95 degree heat spot watering the new plants and anything looking bad.

While Meg was watering I picked these tomatoes, the orange ones on the top are Rutgers are around 12 ounce tomatoes, the darker ones are Cherokee Purple most of them went over a pound! I'm sure this bowl has at least 10 pounds of tomatoes. These are the biggest and best Cherokee Purples I have ever grown!

The Roma tomatoes will be harvested tomorrow 2-3 pounds look to be ready. My history with romas is not so good, these are looking great! The Jubilee tomatoes should be ready very soon too.

While feeding the bees late this afternoon I kept hearing odd noises in the big oak tree by the pond. Later I went out to turn on the sprinkler and watched a Northern Cardinal fledgling in the garden path, must have just flew out of the nest. Both parent cardinals were watching ever so carefully, I left them alone to watch over their baby.

The temperatures are still hot as it can get here, Friday is calling for 102 (39c) degrees. Dry, yes it is very dry, we had a couple small showers a few days ago, got a little water in the rain totes, the new one got at least 20 gallons, I used some of that water yesterday.

The Other Rain Tote

Took us a while to figure out where we wanted to place the other 300 gallon rain tote. The back corner of the house seemed good lots of roof to fill it with rain water but not a great location to water the front garden being on the down hill side. So we decided on the workshop ( I always called it my shed until we had the house appraised). As you can see the roof is smaller on the back side, yet it was the best location and up hill of most everything in the garden.

I dug and poured 4- 12 inch x 16 inch footers the other day, this rain tote will weight 2400 pounds and we don't want it falling over. The stand was built out of cut off or left over over 4 x 4s and 2 x 8s. On the inside of the stand I doubled up the wood with recycled 2 x 6s from a tear out. Each corner of the stand has 12-14 3 inch deck screws holding it together and the legs are notched so the band boards rests on the legs.

Once the stand was built I dragged the 300 gallon tote over to the stand and somehow lifted it up and onto the stand, it is about 3 foot off the ground on the lowest side.

 You can see I also gathered up scraps and built a small bucket shelf. Tried it out by flooding the gutter with the garden hose. The shelf works great for filling buckets. The white elbows in the downspout got painted brown but the 2 elbows at the corner of the shed leak I'll have to glue them together.

I then the next day, did I mention it was 100 degrees yesterday? I picked up some extra downspout elbows(brown is no longer available) and hooked up both downspouts. Yes the one across the window looks ugly I know... Once I got the downspouts to the tote it occurred to me that leaves and stuff would be going right into the tote and the spigot is at the very bottom and it would quickly clog up and be a tub of water we could not drain. So I called the engineer(in my head) and came up with this pickle bucket (Meg Sorry). I cut out the hole in the top of the tote with a jigsaw and dropped the bucket in about half way. I then drilled hundreds of 3/8 inch holes in the bottom of the bucket for drainage. Then cut out two pieces of 1/4 inch hardware cloth for a screen in the bottom of the bucket. I'll likely get some 1/8 inch hardware cloth to make the screen a bit finer.

 

This Red-spotted Purple butterfly was great help for me today as well. It landed on the tote many times during the day as I was working. We have several of these around the yard, they like damp spots and we have been watering a good bit. Guess what it is expected to reach 100 degrees Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday (yeah the tomatoes love it). Usally we get one or two 100 degree days each summer, by Sunday we will have had 6 100 degrees days already.

When I took the thermometer off the wall of the shed to install the rain tote, I found this Gray Treefrog behind it. We find these treefrogs all the time around here. Currently you can not walk around the house without seeing 5-10 baby toads. 

 Gray Hairstreak on Mountain Mint, we had three of these little butterflies yesterday in the Mountain Mint.

 A look at our tomatoes about 8 foot tall, the temporary fencing has kept out the deer. These plants are 8 foot tall and covered with green tomatoes. The cucumbers trellis is on the right.

 it pays to add lots of compost and water the garden look at these 7 foot tall tomatoes. That is a 4 foot tall Serrano pepper plant between the tomatoes.

Our first cucumbers of the season. Oops, corrected the first cucumbers from the seeds we planted, we harvested one cucumber that volunteered.

 Our first tomato this year a sandwich sized Rutgers Tomato. Not tasted it yet, guess who bought tomatoes at the farmers market yesterday.

We have lot of green tomatoes under those giant plants see.

Rain Tote filled!

We still have not had the gutter guy out yet, been too busy to take the time off to meet them. Anyway in the past 4 days after 2 pm it has rained cats and dogs in Durham and Raleigh. We missed getting these afternoon showers 3 out of the 4 days and we are only one half hour north of Durham. Now it is very wet here and the rain water is not needed in the garden.

So you might ask why is the 300 gallon rain tote filled then? I have placed 5 gallon buckets under the eaves, when they filled up I'd pour them into the drain that goes to the rain tote. On Wednesday night at about dark, the rain filled and I emptied about 30-40 buckets. Got quite wet but I had fun. The rest was a few rains and bucket pours. I thought the tote was maybe 2/3 full. This morning I cut in the 2 inch PVC over flow drain and saw the tote water level was only 1/2 inch below the drain hole I cut out.

Several people have asked how we got the rain totes so cheaply. I found them in the farm and garden section of craigslist (see the link in my side bar). Our totes were used for mulch dye. I have found that some dye remains and settles at the bottom. So I have been opening the valve and letting out about a gallon of brown water every few hours when I have had the chance. The water is coming out clear now. We'll be using the first water on the flower beds, then later move to the vegetable garden. The other tote I have rinsed it out and will likely put the pressure washer inside to clean it out even better.

Here is the over flow drain. I used 2 inch PVC pipe, think about it a 3 inch drain line is filling the tank, so a large drain is needed. I see rain barrels in the stores with 5/8 inch hose connectors for drains, hook a hose to it and the hose folds over and barely works. My advise it to cap the hose drain and drill into the barrel and attach at least a 1 1/2 inch PVC line and pipe it down and away from the house.

Hooking up this 2 inch drain required a 2 1/4 inch hole saw to drill the tank. I then screwed an 2 inch PVC male adapter into the hole and measured and glued on the rest of the fittings. The drain will water one of our camellias and flow down into the yard and then into the woods.

Thought I would share this morings breakfast with you. Told Meg I wanted 3 eggs, she always eats just one. This morning I ate 2 double yolk eggs. These eggs were bought at the local farmers market for $3 a dozen. I've only seen 2-3 double yolk eggs in my entire life, out of 3 eggs today we got 2 doubles!

Here is our beehive right now. I added the second brood box on Monday. My inspection showed the single brood box nearly full and no pests what so ever. Crossing my fingers we will not have too many problems. Like the background of the hive?

Last thing, remember the Japanese Anemones I order last fall from Holland? I got little root pieces, here is what they look like right now. The weeds here have been growing faster than the anemones, but I think that will be changing soon.

Rain Chains Installed!

Today I worked on the plumbing to hook up the rain chains to the 300 gallon rain tote and the drain that goes to the pond. It took about 4 hours to cut into the deck and install two simulated (fiberglass) concrete urns into the deck and drain. I used these urns because I could used an 3.5 inch hole saw to cut the hole into the bottom of the urn.

This photo was a test using the garden hose to see what the rain chains look like with water going down them. This is the tear drop cup rain chain, I really like the tear drop chain links on these. FYI all the chain links have been soldered together, these are nice quality rain chains from India.

This is the hammered cup rain chain, it has more cups that the other rain chain, they are closer together.. This side I hooked up to a drain that goes to our pond. The gutter man still has to install the gutters for us, the chains were just hung from a screw to line up the drains. It is cheaper to have the gutter guy make the gutters custom than my buying gutters at the big box store(bronze gutters are no longer available either) and installing them myself. Gutters and downspouts run $3 a foot installed around here. We used to line up 5 gallon buckets here to collect rain water.

Here is an update: The hammered cup rain chain is a complete failure in a heavy rain. I have a video of it during a downpour, the holes in the cups are too small making the water exit the first few cups, I have a video here.

This rain chain goes to the rain tote. A lot of water comes down here, half the screened porch, and one quarter of the living room roof drains here. We have had problems with water splashing on the door and seeping through the 2 piece threshold(never buy exterior doors at Lowes!). This was the first time in 35 years of construction I've seen an exterior door with a crappy threshold like this.  Please excuse the mess in the porch.

Here is a close up of the hammered cup rain chain.

This is the drain system under the deck that goes to the rain tote.

In case your wondering how the urns attached to the drain. I used a male adapter to attach the urn to the PVC pipe and cut the threads off a female adapter to make a threaded nut for the male adapter. I siliconed the male adapter to the urn and then screwed down the home made nut to hold it together securely.

Here is the 300 gallon rain tote under the screened porch. I still need to hook up the over flow pipe out of 2" PVC pipe.

The cost of creating this system FYI:

2 rain chains with shipping $200
2 urns  $75
1 300 gallon rain tote and delivery $95
3 inch PVC piping and fittings  $80
We spent $450 on this. My fees as a handyman installing the rain tote and running the plumbing would have been around $400 so unless your handy this could cost you around $850 to do. That is if you could get the deal we got on the rain tote and had a reasonable handyman.

We still have another 300 gallon rain tote to install under the work shop. This one will be built on a platform to raise it up a bit. The rain tote full of water will weight 2400 pounds so it will be strong and set on concrete pads.


On the recycling front, Meg found a computer desk and really nice barely used sled today curbside in front of some rich folks house while running down a deal from Craigslist.  The sled is like a Flexible Flyer, but not that brand, here in NC we might could use it ever few years, with the snows we get.

Today the brand new hose I purchased 3 weeks ago was left on at the house spigot and shut off with a timer at the other end. The hose burst partially next to the spigot and now needs a replacement female end..... The upper 90s here can mess up a hose pretty quick.

300 Gallon Rain Totes and Bees Orientation

Sunday I called this guy on Craigslist and he delivered two 300 gallon totes that we plan on using as rain barrels. These totes had contained brown mulch dye and can be used for agricultural use. So now I have to fit them up.

One will go under our porch, it is in there right now, needs pulled out and placed on leveled concrete blocks. The dirt under the porch is hard clay like bricks has not seen rain in 3 years, very hard to dig in. The other tote we are not sure where we want to put it maybe on the back side of our shed, it is very high ground there. These were a pretty good deal at $75 each plus $40 for delivery.

 This is our first tall phlox of the summer to bloom. Meg and I bought a nice assortment of tall phlox at Big Bloomers when we first started gardening together.

 Above is a single dianthus flower from one of the six gallon sized planted I rescued from Home Depot. They looked pretty bad, but planting them and giving them water they are picking back up. Four of these went in one of the front beds the other two went in the school garden.

Another Home Depot rescued plant Coreopsis grandiflora. I picked up 4 gallon pots of these, on Saturday they looked down right pitiful when we planted them. Saturday night it rained and look what showed up on Monday!

Here is a short video of our bees in an orientation flight. They did this for 10 or more minutes, the bees were swarming around the front of the hive and above it swirling around. Very interesting to see, they completely ignored me. Hoping our first brood might have been out for the first time. Today marked 4 weeks since we got our package of bees.